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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



PICTURES 



FROM 



THE LIFE OF NELSON 




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PICTURES 



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THE LIFE OF NELSON 




Wr CLARK RUSSELL 



NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 



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Copyright, 1897, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 

„ Page 

Chapter 

Preface ^" 

I. Early Boyhood ^ 

II. "I WILL BE A Hero" 22 

III. "Sweethearts and Wives" . . . ^ . 43 

IV. St. Vincent 75 

V. Teneriffe ^°3 

VI. The Nile ^28 

VII. Sketches and Incidents *55 

VIII. The Baltic ^79 

IX. "All in the Downs" 205 

X. The Pursuit of the French .... 226 

XL Trafalgar 247 

XII. Poor Jack 275 

Supplementary Note ^95 



PREFACE 

THESE short and slight excursions of my 
pen will be accepted as a little volume 
of water colours by a hand which is not an 
" expert's " nor naval in the military sense of 
the word; and if they are ill done there are 
plenty of critics to tell me so. 

I was commissioned by Mr. Clement K. 
Shorter, the able editor of the " Illustrated 
London News," to write these articles, and I 
beg to thank him and the proprietors of the 
" English Illustrated Magazine " for their kind- 
ness in permitting me to reprint them. I have 
added as a supplement an article on the condi- 
tion of our merchant seamen, which is most 
certainly not irrelevant whatever else it may be. 
In former times the navy and the merchant 
service were interdependent. We looked to 
the red flag for reinforcements, and merchant 
Jack helped us to win our greatest victories. 
Now, everything, as I have pointed out, is 
changed. The merchant ship on which we 
used to rely for seamen is filled with foreigners 



Vlll 



Preface 



who are of no earthly use to us as a fight- 
ing element. The shipowners act traitorously 
towards their country in their quiet but insistent 
elimination of the English merchant sailor from 
British ships ; but whatever is cheap is good 
enough at sea as things stand, and no doubt in 
a very short time there will not be in existence 
such a thing as an English merchant sailor. 
But this and more you will find set forth at 
the end. 

Everything fresh, true, and good about the 
sea usually comes from America. In this 
country we have had one sea-writer. He is 
Marryat. At all events, we point to no other. 
People who cannot discriminate or distinguish, 
talk of Smollett as a naval novelist. He was 
at sea for a very short time, and cruised amongst 
the gallipots of the surgeon in the cockpit, 
whose scenes he has painted with the brush of 
a Hogarth. But he was no more a sailor than 
the doctor who feels your pulse and looks at 
your tongue. He never went aloft, knew noth- 
ing of navigation, probably could not have told 
you swiftly and correctly the names of the sails 
and rigging of a ship. But what he did, was 
well done, and I wish there was more of it. 

It is from America that the real sea-message 
usually comes. We find it in Fenimore 



Preface 



IX 



Cooper's " Ned Myers," in Herman Melville's 
" Redburn," in the incomparable Dana's " Two 
Years before the Mast," and now in Captain 
Mahan's very instructive, abundant, and inter- 
esting " Life of Lord Nelson." Mahan has 
sought to do for his brilliant hero exactly what 
Dana has achieved for his humble merchant 
sailor of the " Pilgrim." In both cases the 
interpretation is very fine, but it must be remem- 
bered that Dana had not a glorious career to 
write about, had not a fascinating, voluptuous 
heroine to introduce. His genius is great and 
ever admirable, because he was the Jirst to open 
the fore-scuttle and point with eloquent fore- 
finger down into the merchant seaman's obscure, 
darksome, wet, miserable home. It was a reve- 
lation ! It was the life of thousands of toilers 
of whose very existence people ashore knew 
nothing. Many great men in this country were 
eager and ardent in their recognition of it, 
— Charles Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, Carlyle, 
amongst others. All these men wrote flatter- 
ing letters to Dana, who has rendered humanity 
so great a service that nothing short of a public 
statue erected to his famous memory in the city 
of Boston could sufficiently express the gratitude 
that is due, and by all thoughtful seafarers, 
felt. 



X Preface 

Mahan's " Nelson " touches the other pole. 
It reads like a novel, and Cooper could not 
have made it more interesting. It, too, is a 
revelation in its way, and it is not only a very 
great monument to the author's industry, it 
is packed full of everything that has been said 
about Nelson at all trustworthy, and it is also 
one of the finest literary compliments the United 
States have ever paid this country. 

The life of Nelson consists of anecdotes, inci- 
dents, battles, and so forth. All the stories 
have been told over and over again. It would 
be unwise to say anything that is new, because 
it would not be true. It is hard, therefore, in 
the face of generations of biographers to find 
freshness of colour for these Pictures of Nelson. 
Stanier Clarke, Southey, and other biographers 
of Nelson, have told the stories of his life, have 
related the incidents, even the most dramatic 
incidents, of his career, with little ambition of 
" colourishment," as Sir Thomas Browne would 
say. Nelson's latest biographers attempt no 
more. The same stories and the same death- 
bed scene are to be found in all the books. 
How can we give freshness to such a worn 
canvas ^ Of all the lives before the public the 
one that is most sure of lasting, in my opinion, 
is Southey's. We read it when we were chil- 



Preface 



XI 



dren, our children read it ; it is a national book, 
and we love it. The best edition I know is 
Mr. David Hannay's, and I commend it and 
its valuable appendices with sincere pleasure, 
because Mr. David Hannay is the able son of 
the author of " Singleton Fontenoy," a gallant, 
true, beautiful, scholarly marine story, and a 
handsome and a sufficient effort to neutralise 
the degrading caricatures of our Scotch friend, 
Tobias the profane. 

One page of graphic description is worth 
whole shelves of insipid narrative. This was 
my opinion when, in my " Life of Nelson " 
pubHshed by Messrs. Putnam's of New York, 
I quoted in full, as I quote in these pages. 
Lieutenant Parsons' picture of Nelson on board 
his ship when in chase of the " Genereux," one 
of the two line-of-battle ships which had escaped 
from the Nile. Captain Mahan has also, I 
observe, quoted in full this description, without, 
however, referring to his authority. One wants 
to know how they fought in Nelson's time. 
We can think of nothing but the ironclad and 
the torpedo in this age. The historian whose 
periods never sent a boy to sea, but who is 
scrupulously accurate in his dates (mostly, I 
mean), who is very strong and even fierce in 
his opinions on naval matters, though his books 



Xll 



Preface 



sell chiefly in " remainders," will tell you that 
the action began at noon, but by the log of the 
" Hesperus " it began at three seconds past 
noon, by the log of the " Pinafore " at twenty 
seconds past noon, and then the " Dido " 
delivered a broadside, and the Frenchman or 
the Yankee fired a broadside in return. You 
hear nothing, you see nothing, you feel nothing. 
On the printed page before you are a number 
of black marks with black lines attached 
to them signifying the positions of ships at 
various times in the engagement, and in this 
age of ironclads and thirty-knot torpedo- 
catchers these black marks suggest nothing so 
much as black beetles, whose tactics in escaping 
the printed page would be to the full as lumi- 
nous, instructive, and certainly as humorous, as 
the lesson of the historian's diagrams. 

Here is a description of a fight which I com- 
mend to the attention of the " experts," who 
will not fail to admire this admirable picture. 
In 1 80 1 despatches were received at the Ad- 
miralty by the Norfolk Packet. One letter 
ran thus : — 

Sir, — I have the honour to acquaint you, that on 
January 1st, 1 80 1, I worked his Majesty's ship the 
" Desdemona " out of Chesapeake Bay in company with 
the republican French frigate " Le Fripon " ; and having 



Preface xiii 

gained a sufficient offing to come to battle, we conti- 
menced close action ; when the superior metal of the 
enemy caused the " Desdemona " to make so much 
water that the carpenter informed me the Ship was 
going down. Upon hearing this I called my boarders, 
and carried the enemy in the smoke. Every officer, 
seaman and marine, did their duty. I regret the 
loss of. . . . 

I am &c., 

Bryan Brilliant. 

The story runs thus : — 

" The French frigate had now weighed, and 
stood out of the bay, with her jack, ensign, and 
pennant flying ; nor did an interval of a minute 
elapse before the anchor of the * Desdemona ' 
was hove up to the bow, and sail made on the 
ship. 

" No sooner had both ships gained an offing, 
than the French frigate hauled up her foresail, 
took, in her topgallant sails, and hove to for the 
* Desdemona,' whose inferiority of sailing was 
manifest, and who was crowding every inch of 
canvas to come within gunshot of her oppo- 
nent. Upon which Captain Brilliant took in his 
royals, and his ship's company manning the 
shrouds, gave three hearty cheers. . . . 

"The men, fore and aft, were now at their 
quarters, and Captain Brilliant, looking over 



XIV 



Preface 



the break of the quarter-deck, vociferated to 
them through his speaking-trumpet, 

" ' Stand by, my boys ! ' 

" ' All ready ! ' was the reply. 

" Upon which our hero ran up alongside 
the French frigate ; and calling to his people 
* Fire away ! ' they discharged their broadside, 
which was returned by the enemy before the 
sound was out of the * Desdemona's ' guns. 

" The action thus begun was continued on 
board the * Desdemona ' with that cool intre- 
pidity which is the distinguishing characteristic 
of British seamen ; and Captain Brilliant proved 
that he was both a sailor and an officer, for he 
both worked and fought his own ship. 

" And on the quarter-deck of glory were to 
be seen, the master anticipating the orders of 
the captain ; the marine officer firing his division 
over the quarter, and Lieutenant Hurricane 
calling to the men at the quarter-deck guns and 
carronades, ^ Keep yourselves cool, my lads ! 
Mind the heave of the sea ! Now strike it into 
her!' 

" The two ships had now got close to each 
other, exchanging their compliments yard-arm 
and yard-arm ; a practice introduced by Benbow, 
and revived by Anson. At this period, the 
hammocks in the quarter-deck nettings of the 



Preface 



XV 



* Desdemona ' caught fire from a wad of the 
enemy ; upon which a young midshipman 
jumped from his gun, and lugging out his 
knife, cut them away overboard. 

" * Bravo ! ' exclaimed Captain Brilliant — but 
before he could utter more, an eighteen-pound 
shot tore up the bulwark and made the splinters 
fly in every direction, laying flat on the deck, 
some on their backs and some on their faces, 
the following officers and men : — 

Robert Soundings, Master. 

Francis Easy, The Marine Ofiicer. ^ 

Thomas Wilson, Quartermaster. 

John Pearce, Captain of the after-guard. 

Hugh Vincent, Ordinary Seaman; and 

Mars Mattocks, A Marine. 

" ' Jump here ! bear a hand ! ' vociferated 
Lieutenant Hurricane, * and carry Mr. Sound- 
ings into the cockpit. A blasted shot that ! 
Messmate, are you much wounded ? * 

" * I fear,' faltered the master, * my grog is 
stopped.' 

" * And how are you, my dear Easy ? ' said 
Hurricane. 

" ' I feel,' replied the marine ofhcer, * I shall 
have to capitulate ! Death has already put his 
storming-ladder to my soul ! I die ! I die ! 
My God ! My God ! ' 



XVI 



Preface 



" * Are you mtich hurt, Pearce ? ' inquired 
Hurricane. 

" ' Yes, sir,' replied the captain of the after- 
guard, * that shot cut away my Hfe-lines ! My 
soul is unreeving ! O Peggy ! Peggy ! My 
wife ! my dear wife ! ' 

" About this period the colours of the enemy 
disappeared. 

" * She has struck ! ' cried an Irish landsman 
in the waist. 

" * Struck ! ' retorted Captain Brilliant. ^ By 
heaven ! You may strike first yet. Does she 
slacken fire ? Is it the guns or the colours you 
judge by ? ' 

"The captain had scarce finished speaking 
when a new pair of colours were hoisted by the 
enemy. Her ensign had been shot away. 

" A sailor from each of the quarter-deck guns 
had now left his station, to carry the wounded 
down into the cockpit ; and a couple of stout 
lads had got hold of the master, whom they 
were lugging to the hatchway. 

" ^ Avast there ! ' cried Captain Brilliant, 
*with the master. He has struck. The soul 
of as good a seaman as ever took hold of the 
helm of a vessel is gone aloft to Heaven ! ' 

" ' Jump to the marine officer,' cried Lieute- 
nant Hurricane. 



Preface xvii 

" * By ! ' said Captain Brilliant, ' it is 

of no use. The marine officer has resigned his 
commission. Look to Pearce, the captain of 
the after-guard. How is it with him ? ' 

" * He is gone, sir,' replied Lieutenant Hurri- 
cane, ^ upon the same tack as the marine officer. 
He has answered the muster of death.' 

" At this juncture a crash was heard in the 
main deck, which was followed by doleful groans. 

"*Jump,' said the captain, * into the waist! 
the Frenchman's shot is playing at hell and 
turn-up-Jack there ! ' 

" The midshipman soon returned. 

" * A shot, sir, has dismounted one of the 
midship guns, killed the third lieutenant, and 
wounded almost every man at the gun.' 

" * What ! ' cried Lieutenant Hurricane, ' has 
death dropped the peak of my messmate, poor 
Balcony ? ' 

" ' Huzza ! my sons ! ' cried Captain Brilliant 
to the people at the main-deck guns. ' Beauty ! 
that 's the fire ! ' 

" The exhortations of Captain Brilliant were 
interrupted by the carpenter. He came upon 
deck to acquaint the captain that the enemy's 
shot had taken such effect that there were sev- 
eral feet of water in the well ; and that even if 
recourse were had to the pumps, it would be 



xviii Preface 

impracticable to keep the ship half an hour 
above water. 

" * Be it so, Mr. Chips/ said the captain. 
* But hark you ! Say not a word about the 
matter. I will soon have a clear well.' 

" The two frigates were now so close along- 
side of one another that their yard-arms were 
mutually locked by their rigging. 

" * Hurricane/ cried Captain Brilliant, * I will 
board the Frenchman in the smoke. Hark 
you ! call the boarders. I will put myself at 
their head. In the mean time, be ready yourself 
to follow me with a fresh gang of volunteers.' 

" The boarders now assembled to the amount 
of seventy, — men equal to any heroic enter- 
prise, men who would have gone through flames, 
had their duty imposed on them the task. They 
were armed with cutlasses and pistols. 

" ^ Are you ready, my sons ? * cried Captain 
Brilliant. 

" ' All ready, sir,' was the reply. 

" ^ Then follow me ! ' cried the hero. 

" Captain Brilliant now boarded the enemy's 
ship, followed by his men, who were all contend- 
ing for the honour of fighting by his side. 

" The French officers and sailors collected to 
oppose the assailants. But such was the disci- 
pline, such the intrepidity of the British tars, 



Preface xix 

that resistance was of no avail. Brilliant, with 
his troop of boarders, made his way through 
a host of enemies. The first lieutenant followed 
in succession with volunteers from the ship's 
company ; and the * Desdemona,' like the fabled 
horse of Troy, poured out heroes from her 
womb ! 

" The Frenchmen called for quarter. But 
before they had made the supplication a mid- 
shipman had got aft and hauled down their 
colours." 

This is a striking old-fashioned sea-piece wor- 
thy of being hung alongside Lieutenant Par- 
sons' picture, which I have quoted in these 
pages. The descriptions show us how they 
fought in the days of Nelson. It is a forsaken 
art because it is no longer necessary. The Bril- 
liants of to-day will not fight their ships as they 
did when admirals and captains were dependent 
on the wind. It is sad to reflect that Nelson's 
tactics, which gave us our marine supremacy, 
should be of no use to us. They sank out of 
sight, paralysed by the stroke of the propeller. 
When steam came in the tactics of tacks and 
sheets went out. Would an admiral think of 
cutting the line when he knows that what used to 
be called the leewardmost ships could steam up 



XX Preface 

to the rescue or help of their friends at the rate 
of sixteen or twenty knots an hour ? Every 
wind is a fair wind for the steamer. But old 
sea officers and naval schoolmasters cannot 
submit to be told that the change is absolute. 
They cling with pathetic affection to the obso- 
lete methods ; for them the wind continues to 
howl in the shrouds. If they say it was a bad 
,day for England when the ironclad was intro- 
duced, and when the old wooden battle-ship was 
sent to the knackers, most thoughtful people 
will agree with them. The ironclad is not 
likely to produce the splendid set of sailors who 
were at sea in Nelson's day. How can you 
make sailors out of ships in which there is no 
work for a sailor to do ? But one thing is uni- 
versally believed : that if the tactics of Nelson 
are as dead as his hallowed ashes, his glorious 
memory survives to inspire the British seaman. 
In ordinary sea-manoeuvres also, steam has 
wrought an astounding change. Let us take 
the case of a ship in a gale of wind on a lee 
shore. I will instance the steamer first. In 
March, 1889, H. M. S. " CalHope," with several 
warships of other nations, was anchored in Apia 
Bay in the Island of Samoa. It came on to 
blow a gale of wind ; the gale grew into a hur- 
ricane of cyclonic power. The situation of the 



Preface 



XXI 



ships was one of frightful danger. They lay 
embayed and crowded like sheep. Captain 
Kane, the commander of the "Calliope," formed 
his resolution ; he would steam out and secure 
an offing if he could. All the seamanship here 
required lay in the captain's resolution. The 
work was to be done by the engineers and the 
engines. Her struggle, as she was thrust out, 
scarcely making a mile an hour through the 
enormous head seas, has been graphically de- 
scribed. Captain Kane conned his ship with 
great judgment, and eventually gained the open 
sea with but little material loss worth mention- 
ing. This is how it is done in the days of 
steam. 

Let us see how it was done in the days of 
sail. On the evening of the i6th September, 
1812, H. M. S. " Magnificent," a line-of-battle 
ship of seventy-four guns, anchored between 
Chasseron and the Isle of Rhe, in the neigh- 
bourhood of Basque Roads. Before the sails 
were furled, the weather looking threatening, a 
reef was taken in the courses, and the topsails 
were close reefed. The wind increased, and the 
topgallant yards were got down upon deck. 
They veered cable to a cable and a half, on the 
best bower anchor, by which the ship was riding 
in sixteen fathoms of water. Shortly before ten 



XXll 



Preface 



the anchor broke and the small bower was let 
go, which brought the ship up in ten fathoms. 
"The yards and topmasts were immediately 
struck. The night was dark, but the sea break- 
ing on the reef made a light by which an awful 
view of the ship's dangerous position was ob- 
tained. The best bower was now unspliced, and 
the inner cable bent to the spare anchor. The 
slack of the best bower was then hove in to 
about two thirds of a cable, and the anchor, 
fouling a rock, helped to hold the ship. It was, 
therefore, ' bitted ' and secured." A leadsman 
was in the port chains getting a cast of the lead 
every five minutes. A quartermaster stood at 
the starboard gangway attending the deep-sea 
lead, which was probably on the ground over 
the side to show if she drifted. Large rocks 
were now seen close under the ship. She was 
without chain cables, and it was known that her 
hemp cables would certainly chafe through in a 
few hours. A wild broken sea was running, so 
jerking the ship that the oars were occasionally 
thrown out of the barge on the booms. 

" When every preparation had been made, — 
the officers and men in their respective stations, 
ready to act on the shortest notice, — the cap- 
tain placed himself in the port gangway, to 
watch the heaving of the hand-lead. The gale, 



Preface xxiii 

accompanied by rain, continued with unabated 
force, and the heavy sea breaking upon the reef 
astern, produced frightful flashes, which, in the 
darkness of the night, rolhng over the rocks, 
might have been hkened to moving masses of 
liquid fire." 

The day had scarcely dawned when the 
quartermaster, attending the deep-sea lead, de- 
clared the ship to be driving. The spare 
anchor was instantly let go, which providentially 
brought her up again ; nevertheless it was but 
too certain that the ship could not be held 
much longer by cables which had been chafing 
so many hours on sharp and rugged rocks. 
The wind was now at west ; St. Marie Church, 
on Isle Rhe, bore east. The gale increased ; 
but the favourable change in the wind was 
counterpoised by a strong lee current, and a 
heavy cross-sea on the off-shore bow. The sun 
had already reached the meridian, unaccompa- 
nied by any indication of a favourable change in 
the weather ; and the captain feeling it impos- 
sible to sustain through another long night the 
intense anxiety of that of the preceding, thus 
addressed the French pilot : — 

" Pilot, can you save the ship ? " "By gare, 
no ! " was the desponding reply of the foreigner. 
Orders were then given to sway up the lower 



xxiv Preface 

yards to three fourths of their usual height , — 
to secure the topmasts close down, leaving the 
topsail yards to work, on the caps, — to pass the 
largest hawser through the starboard quarter- 
port, and to bend it to the cable on the spare 
anchor, for the purpose of acting as a spring in 
canting the ship to port, previously to cutting 
the cables ; but, at the instant of bending the 
hawser, the cable parted, and it was ultimately 
bent to the small bower cable. 

The courses and topsails were secured in three 
or four places, on their respective yards, with 
stops of spun-yarn, so as to be cut on the 
instant ; the gaskets had been previously cast 
off: the head and main yards were braced up 
for the starboard tack, and the other yards kept 
square, dividing the men (who would otherwise 
have been required at the braces) between the 
fore-tack, and fore and fore-topsail sheets. 

It will be seen, that in the event of the spring 
casting the ship, the head yards would require 
no alteration, and it would only be necessary to 
guard against setting their sails too soon. On 
the other hand, if the spring (which was every 
way probable) broke, the yards could not be 
better placed for producing the sternboard, 
which would in that case be necessary to clear 
the reef 



Preface 



XXV 



The spring was hove in to a tolerable strain. 
The master was directed to attend at the bitts, 
and see that the carpenters cut the cables the 
instant the word was given. All being ready, 
and the greater number of those on board being 
in the expectation of a watery grave, the cables 
were cut. The heavy sea on the port-bow act- 
ing against the spring, caused it to snap : it was 
immediately cut by the axe provided for that 
purpose, to prevent retarding the ship's stern- 
way : the helm was put hard to starboard — the 
fore-topmast staysail hoisted — the fore- topsail 
let fall, and sheeted home — the fDresail let fall 
— the tack boarded and the sheet roused aft. 
All the sail was flat aback and set in less than 
half a minute. The ship's head paid round 
quickly towards the reef. When the wind was 
abaft the beam, the mizzen-topsail was let fall, 
and sheeted home, and the helm shifted. When 
the wind came right aft, the main topsail was let 
fall, and sheeted home : the mainsail was next 
loosed, the tack boarded, the sheet roused aft, 
and the mizzen-topsail, cross-jack, and main top- 
sail yards braced up for the starboard tack. 

This manoeuvre, from the cutting of the spring 
till the requisite sails were set, did not exceed 
two minutes. At the moment that the ship's 
head was in the direction of the rocks, and then 



xxvi Preface 

only in five fathoms water, the vessel made a 
desperate plunge, and in hauling to the wind the 
send of the sea did not leave, by the soundings, 
more than a single foot of water under the keel. 

The ship was shortly afterwards safely an- 
chored in Basque Roads. 

This is taken from a " Manual," dead as the 
gallant hand that planned it. It excellently 
describes a most masterful manoeuvre. Old 
sailors will follow the evolutions with enjoy- 
ment ; but to young sailors bred in steam, 
much of the language must necessarily be blank 
as Chinese. They were giants as fighting men ; 
they were giants as sailor men, and those were 
the days of Nelson. As the manoeuvres of H. 
M. S. " Magnificent" are to the manoeuvres of 
H. M. S. *' Calliope," so are the tactics of Nel- 
son to the tactics which will be adopted in the 
next naval battle. 

I am fully in agreement with those who 
lament the general ignorance of naval history 
throughout the country. There should be no 
literature more fascinating. Why is it not so ? 
Why do not schoolboys greedily devour studies 
and histories of old heroes and old wars and 
their causes and results ? The truth is, if naval 
history is unpopular and unread, it is because it 
does unfortunately fall into the hands of men who 



Preface 



xxvii 



are not artists and who are incapable of writing 
so as to engage and delight. Mr. Laird Clowes' 
" The Royal Navy " should prove a popular 
work because he is importing colour, and life, 
and light, and movement into its pages. Dry 
bones are made to live again, and one follows 
the narrative (by several hands) as a romance 
of the sea. But what naval histories have we 
which are not dull and disgusting ^ What 
naval history is likely to attract the attention 
of the young, who want the story told with 
breadth, force, and knowledge, in language 
coloured with the spirit of its subject? What 
boy would or could sit down and read James ? 

The world expected much from Professor 
Laughton when it was reported that he was 
writing a "Life of Nelson." The "Life" 
appeared, I read it, and I mourned. Professor 
Laughton is not an artist ; he has no sense of 
proportion or of keeping ; he loads his slender 
page with an account of the Sucklings, then 
seems to follow my suggestion in asking where 
Nelson got his fighting spirit from ; and he 
agrees with me that the stories told about 
Nelson's boyhood are scarcely worth recalling 
or crediting. It is a very accurate little book, 
but uncommonly dry ; the schoolmaster and 
the critic are visible in every line ; he is perpet- 



xxviii Preface 

ually breaking away from his subject to quarrel 
with or correct the opinions of others, which I 
submit is not biography but criticism. And 
yet I understand that this author is among 
others who lament that naval history is unread 
in this country. 

I may add that these papers were written in 
the middle of 1896. 

W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
Bath, 1897. 



Pictures from the Life of 
Nelson 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY BOYHOOD 

WHAT genius of the brush will give us a 
picture of little Nelson wandering in 
Chatham Dockyard in search of the " Raisonna- 
ble," a big ship of sixty-four guns commanded by 
Captain Suckling, and filled with pigtails and 
petticoat trousers ? One need but close one's 
eyes to behold the vision in its completeness, 
pale in the ghostly sunshine of a long vanished 
day. The weather is bleak, the year is 1771. 
The London coach is late. Presently it thun- 
ders up to the door of the hostelry, and there 
alights a delicate little boy, attenuated and pale, 
eyes brilliant with genius, and a countenance of 
charming refinement shadowed by the sadness 
of leave-taking. 

A boy going to sea ! How very different, to 
be sure, his aspect, and the suggestions of it, 
from those traditional ideas of boys going to sea 



2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

which we receive into our minds from the inimi- 
table, licentious, and libellous Tobias ! This 
boy should sport a grog-blossom for a nose, his 
hair should hang in a shower of carrot-parings ; 
though but a weanling, his utterance should be 
as coarse as his teeth, and his profanity as vigor- 
ous as the coachman's. How he is dressed I 
am not able to tell you ; his father is a poor 
country parson, and the lad's outfit is a slender 
one. You do not need to be told that he is a 
young gentleman; you see breeding in his hands 
and face, in the turns of his head, in the motions 
of his little form. 

Now he has to find the " Raisonnable," a big 
King's ship, all of the olden time ; and this 
little lad, who in all probability had never seen 
a real ship in his life, stares about him with the 
fascinated eyes of childhood as he walks. Did 
the love of the sea come to this boy through his 
mother, on whose side lay some gallant historic 
memory of ocean-struggle borne upon the page 
of naval record in the tale of Galfridus Walpole's 
action in the Mediterranean in 171 1 ? Was the 
passion for the sea inherent, as it is in most 
English boys ? In spite of his love of sailing 
paper boats in the market gutter at Downham, 
it may be credited that this boy's motive in go- 
ing to sea was to relieve his father from the 



Early Boyhood 3 

burden of maintaining him. Some who Hved 
nearer to his time than we have so said. The 
Rev. Edmund Nelson was at Bath when Httle 
Horatio, in the pleasant rectory-house at Burn- 
ham Thorpe, sitting at table with his brother 
William, asked him — that is, William, who, 
through this same bright-eyed little chap, was 
raised to the peerage as an Earl long after- 
wards — to write to his father for permission 
to go to sea with Uncle Maurice Suckling. 
The reverend gentleman had consented ; and 
what was Captain Suckling's answer ? *' What 
has poor Horace done, that he, above all the 
rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea ? 
But let him come ; and the first time we go into 
action a cannon-ball may knock off his head and 
provide for him at once," 

Little Nelson did not seem able to find the 
"Raisonnable " very easily. He was bewildered 
by the shipping, by the complicated smells, by 
the tempestuous roaring voices of the Jacks, by 
a scene which is not now, as it certainly was not 
then, quite so delectable as the Bower that 
stood by Bendemeer's Stream. While he was 
looking at a hulk that was the home of hun- 
dreds of men, women, and children, though in 
her day her 'tween decks had thundered many 
fateful messages to the enemies of this country, 



4 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

a naval officer who had been watching him ap- 
proached and asked him what he wanted. The 
youngster answered that he was in search of the 
" Raisonnable." " Captain Suckling? " says the 
naval officer. "Yes," answered Horatio. " He 
is my uncle, sir." " I know him very well. 
Yonder is the ' Raisonnable.' Her captain is 
not in Chatham, and may not be here for some 
days. Have you dined ? " " No, sir," answered 
young Nelson. " You look cold and hungry. 
Come along home with me," said the kind- 
hearted officer, viewing with great interest not 
unmingled with pity the pale and delicate face 
of the lad. He marched him to his home, and 
presently he and Horatio, and perhaps kindly 
Mrs. Officer, and maybe — let us hope for the 
sake of posterity — several young Officers, were 
seated at table with a leg of mutton smoking in 
the midst of them and a good pudding to 
follow. I do not say that the embryo hero 
and his kind friend conversed exactly as I have 
written, but depend upon it something answer- 
ing to this brief imaginary talk had being in 
that cold day and in that dockyard. After a 
good meal, which warmed the poor little fellow's 
heart, he went on board the " Raisonnable." 

He had been rated by Captain Suckling as 
midshipman. Old Patronage was then flour- 



Early Boyhood ^ 

ishing in full vigour of limb and body. Is the 
giant dead ? I believe with George Eliot that 
old Leisure is buried, but I fancy that even in 
these regenerated days of stern professors, stiff 
examinations, naval schools, and training-ships, 
a sort of tremble will now and again be seen to 
pass through old Patronage's form, and one eye 
will open and shut suddenly in a wink. By 
Patronage in those days hundreds obtained easy 
entrance into the Navy, and hundreds easy pro- 
motion. Young Nelson undoubtedly had in- 
terest at his back ; Professor Laughton,' in his 
brief " Life of Nelson," tells us that according 
to the " Instructions " Horatio should have 
been rated as the captain's servant. There was 
no dream of degradation in the term. It was 
just a fa^on de parler, — a well understood fic- 
tion ; a young lord, the representative perhaps 
of a ducal house, might be entered as a servant. 
Be this as it will. Nelson undoubtedly started 
on his career as midshipman. The boy was 
twelve years old, having been born Sept. 29, 
1758, and we are now dealing with the early 
month of the year 1771. 

What sort of reception did he meet with 
when he gained the decks of the ship ? Was 
his little lean frame much derided .'' Were 
coarse jokes hurled at him by riggers discoloured 



6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

with rum and by seamen with their back hair 
lying between their shoulder-blades, just as it 
had been tenderly combed and made ship-shape 
by Soosie and Poll, who had left Wapping Old 
Stairs to dwell in Chatham until the " Raison- 
nable " sailed ? Some of Nelson's biographers tell 
us that he wandered about the decks forlorn and 
melancholy, pining for his home, and that his 
young heart yearned for the old rectory, for his 
father and brother, and for the simple interests 
of his childish life. Who should doubt it? 
There is just as much human nature in the 
incipient hero as there is in the average boy 
who will never cut a figure, and whose manli- 
ness is not equal to the suppression of loud 
blubbering when his clinging mother says, 
" God bless you, my darling," and reluctantly, 
with many parting looks, leaves him to the 
loving care of the Reverend Doctor Cane. 
Nelson could weep both as man and boy, and 
he could also be seasick, and one loves him the 
better for such weaknesses, for a perfect hero, 
after the pattern of the Iron Dv.ke, may appeal 
to the admiration, but never to the affection, of 
poor humanity. 

It moves one to pity to figure a delicate little 
boy reared to think with tender reverence and 
love of the Supreme and of all that is right and 



Early Boyhood 7 

pure in life, on board a war-ship of that date. 
The calling of the Navy was, perhaps, never 
before nor since so rough. The pressgangs 
had been doing bloody business in London and 
the out-ports ; and tenders were filled with 
merchantmen (and others who did not know 
what a ship was like), with their heads full of 
holes from the bludgeons of men who knew 
how to use both the cutlass and the pike. " I 
was disarmed," says Smollett, speaking in the 
person of Roderick Random, " taken prisoner, 
and carried on board a pressing tender, where, 
after being pinioned like a malefactor, I was 
thrust down into the hold among a parcel of 
miserable wretches, the sight of whom well-nigh 
distracted me. As the commanding officer had 
not humanity enough to order my wounds to 
be dressed, and I could not use my own hands, 
I desired one of my fellow'raptives who was 
unfettered to take a handkerchief out of my 
pocket and tie it round my head to stop the 
bleeding. He pulled out my handkerchief, 'tis 
true, but, instead of applying it to the use for 
which I designed it, went to the grating of the 
hatchway, and with astonishing composure sold 
it before my face to a bum-boat woman then on 
board, for a quart of gin with which he treated 
my companions, regardless of my circumstances 



8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

and entreaties." The brutalising effect of the 
pressgang, even in this century when something 
of moderation was exercised, and when even 
something of humanity governed the thrust of 
the cutlass or the blow of the stick, may be read 
at large in the works of Marryat and Michael 
Scott. Strange that we should be obliged to 
turn to the pages of the novelists for the real 
historic record ! But most historians of our 
Navy so much concern themselves with dates 
and the contradiction of other people's state- 
ments that they quite forget to be interesting. 

The sailor, then, of Nelson's day was a very 
rough man indeed, with little love for his call- 
ing, but always fighting splendidly, for prize 
money first, and next for the preservation of his 
ship and the annihilation of the enemy. His 
ship was as rough as he was. Smollett draws a 
Hogarthian picture of the cockpit, where the 
midshipmen's quarters were situated : " We 
descended by divers ladders to a space as dark 
as a dungeon, which I understood was immersed 
several feet under water, being immediately 
above the hold. I had no sooner approached 
this dismal gulf than my nose was saluted with 
an intolerable stench of putrefied cheese and 
rancid butter that issued from an apartment at 
the foot of the ladder, resembling a chandler's 



Early Boyhood 9 

shop, where, by the faint glimmering of a candle, 
I could perceive a man with a pale meagre 
countenance, sitting behind a kind of desk, 
having spectacles on his nose and a pen in his 
hand. This (I learned of Mr. Thomson) was 
the ship's steward, who sat there to distribute 
provisions to the several messes, and to mark 
what each received. He therefore presented 
my name to him and desired I might be entered 
in his mess ; then taking a light in his hand, 
conducted me to the place of his residence, 
which was a square of about six feet, surrounded 
with the medicine-chest, that of the first mate, 
his own, and a board by way of table fastened 
to the after powder-room ; it was also enclosed 
with canvas nailed round to the beams of the 
ship, to screen us from the cold, as well as from 
the view of the midshipmen and quartermasters 
who lodged within the cable tiers on each side 
of us." A glimpse of the midshipman and his 
quarters, a little earlier perhaps than Nelson's 
time, may be got by reading some forgotten 
verses written by William Falconer, the poet of 
the " Shipwreck." He thus speaks of the 
cockpit : — 

Deep in that fabric where Britannia boasts 
O'er seas to waft her thunder and her hosts 
A cavern lies ! unknown to cheering day. 
Where one small taper lends a feeble ray. 



I o Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

After some lines not relevant to my purpose, 
Falconer gives us this description of a midship- 
man of a date but little anterior to Nelson's, 
dressing himself for dinner : — 

In neighbouring mansions, lo ! what clouds arise ! — 

It half conceals its owner from our eyes ; 

One penny light with feeble lustre shines. 

To prove the Mid in high Olympus dines. 

Let us approach — the preparation view — 

A cockpit-beau is surely something new. 

To him Japan her varnish' d joys denies. 

Nor bloom for him the sweets of Eastern skies ; 

His rugged limbs no lofty mirror shows. 

Nor tender couch invites him to repose. 

A pigmy glass upon his toilet stands, 

Crack'd o'er and o'er by awkward, clumsy hands ; 

Chesterfield's page polite, the "Seaman's Guide," 

An half-eat biscuit, Congreve's '* Mourning Bride," 

Bestrew' d with powder, in confusion lie. 

And form a chaos to the intruding eye. 

At length this meteor of an hour is dress' d. 

And rises an Adonis from his chest. 

Cautious he treads lest some unlucky slip 

Defiles his clothes with burgou or with flip ; 

These rocks escaped, arrives in statu quo. 

Bows ; dines, and bows ; then sinks again below. 

By the dimly revealing gleam of this poetic 
rush-light we obtain a sort of insight into the 
hidden life of the man-of-war of old days, and 
can easily guess at the scene of confusion, smells, 



Early Boyhood 1 1 

high jinks, the hectoring, craven bully of the 
mess into which little Nelson, fresh from the 
peaceful atmosphere of a country rectory, was 
to be introduced. It is to be lamented that we 
do not know who, if any, took him by the hand 
— how, in short, the little fellow " managed " 
until the arrival of the captain of the vessel. 
One would hope to find some reference to 
Nelson at this critical moment in a letter, an 
entry, a record of memory set down afterwards 
out of love for the glory the little man in later 
years achieved. 

Certainly few things are more interesting in 
naval biography than the story of the introduc- 
tion of the subjects of the lives into the sea 
career. Three instances occur to me. When 
John Jervis, afterwards the famous Earl of St. 
Vincent, the Admiral of St. Valentine's Day, first 
went on board his ship, his reception was such 
that his biographer. Captain Brenton, found 
himself incapable of describing it. " 1 have 
too much respect," he says, " for my readers 
to describe the scene which his Lordship pre- 
sented to me, in a very few words, but in his 
clear and emphatic manner. Sufiice it to say 
that in point of gross immorality and vice it 
equalled or outdid anything described by Smol- 
lett in his ' Roderick Random,' " It is difficult 



1 2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

to understand what Brenton means by " gross 
immorahty and vice." There is surely nothing 
immoral or vicious in the cockpit scenes de- 
picted by Smollett. Of coarseness there is 
plenty, and also a great plenty of swearing. 
Captain Brenton was a religious man of a mild 
and charitable cast of nature, and it is possible 
that he found something more significant in the 
Earl's statement than a rougher sailor would 
have noticed. Perhaps there was something 
in young Jervis's dress that tickled the rude 
humour of his messmates. He wore a coat 
that had been made for him to grow up to. 
The skirts fell to his heels, and the sleeves were 
turned up half the length of the arm. Strap a 
dirk to this shape and fix something laced on 
its head, and caricature might not be able to 
make the figure more ridiculous. That many 
such grotesquely clad naval officers were afloat 
in those days and long subsequently we are well 
assured. A portrait drawn from the life may 
be found in " Old Bloody Politeful," the first 
lieutenant of a corvette, in " The Cruise of the 
Midge." Another instance of the introduction 
into the sea life is Collingwood's. The arch- 
ness of the humour of that valorous North 
from whose loins Collingwood sprang and 
whose dark rolling Tyne and Wear have 



Early Boyhood 13 

yielded us the grandest race of seamen the 
world has ever seen or shall see, may be found 
in the descriptions given in Collingwood's cor- 
respondence. Young Cuthbert went on board 
his ship and sat down upon a gun and began 
to cry bitterly over his separation from home. 
His misery was exquisite ; he yearned for com- 
passion and sympathy. Presently the first 
lieutenant accosted him with a note of kindness 
in his voice. This so affected the boy that he 
eagerly begged the officer to accompany him to 
his sea-chest, out of which he took a pliim-cake 
and offered a large piece to the lieutenant. 

Another instance is that of Lord Dundonald, 
then Lord Cochrane. His introduction was 
truly extraordinary. He found the first lieute- 
nant dressed in the garb of a seaman, with his 
hair tied down his back, a marline-spike in one 
hand and a lump of grease in the other. This 
strange figure was busily occupied in setting up 
the main rigging. His name was Jack Larmour, 
and he had been promoted from the forecastle 
to the quarter-deck, to which part of the ship he 
had brought all the airs and graces of the land 
of the slush lamp and the evil-smelling mess- 
kid. Dundonald stood over six feet high; the 
lieutenant had heard that he was to have entered 
the army, and he surveyed the tall lean figure 



14 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

with contempt. " Get your traps below ! " 
then roared Larmour. " This Lord Cochrane's 
chest ? Does Lord Cochrane think he's going 
to bring a cabin aboard ? The service is going 
to the devil ! " He then sent for the key of 
the young nobleman's chest, and presently a 
noise of sawing was to be heard. In fact, the 
lieutenant ordered the chest to be sawn into 
halves, " accompanying the operation," says 
Lord Dundonald, " by sundry uncompHmentary 
observations on midshipmen in general and on 
myself in particular." 

This sort of usage was not calculated to recon- 
cile a boy to his friends' choice of a sea life. 
The tender age and physical delicacy of little 
Nelson doubtless pleaded for him and rescued 
him from the rough and coarse people among 
whom he had cast his lot. If he had nothing 
to do until Captain Suckling arrived, there was 
always the ship to look at. What a man-of- 
war's hull resembled in those days may be easily 
imagined by viewing the old " Victory " as she 
lies at her moorings off Portsmouth. The white 
bands were not then in use ; they were yellow, 
and often the ships were wholly black. It was 
Nelson who introduced the band broken by the 
gun-ports. The " Victory," as we know her, lacks 
certain curly head-ornamentations such as are 



Early Boyhood 15 

familiar to us in paintings of old ships. I sus- 
pect that the old " Raisonnable" was a perfect bed 
of head-boards, whence her long bowsprit and 
jibbooni forked upward in a steeve that made 
them resemble a fourth mast very severely stayed 
forward. She would have great round tops, 
that is to say, platforms fitted a little below the 
lower mast-head. In these tops the sailors 
could have given a ball. The cat-harpings 
complicated the gear aloft to the eye; every- 
thing was thick and massive. The shrouds 
were like hawsers, and they descended into 
channels filled with immense dead-eyes. But 
the wonderful precision and neatness of the 
British man-of-war would everywhere be visible. 

One thinks of little Nelson as moving about 
gazing at the guns, watching the riggers, staring 
at the apparatus by which the heavy anchors 
were hove up to the yawning hawsepipes by 
hempen cables. But there was no magic in all 
these sights and sounds to lighten the boy's 
spirits. " The filial tenderness of his heart," 
says one of the earliest of his biographers, " at 
first required a solace which it did not find." 

His character, however, began to show itself 
when Suckling arrived. The " Raisonnable " re- 
mained but a short time in commission, and 
Suckling was appointed to a seventy-four-gun 



1 6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

ship called the " Triumph," stationed as a guard- 
ship in the Medway. The boy grew restless ; 
he was seeing nothing of the sea life. How it 
came about I do not know that any of his bio- 
graphers explain ; but whether through the 
advice of Captain Suckling, or because of the 
wishes of the Rev. Edmund Nelson, Horatio 
was sent on a voyage in a small ship to the 
West Indies. She was commanded by Mr. 
John Rathbone, who had served as master's 
mate under Captain Suckling. Nelson was 
absent in this voyage about a year. I confess, 
as one who has served under the red flag, that 
I love to think, and am honoured by thinking, 
of Nelson as a merchantman. The famous 
Cook was also a merchantman. Indeed, some 
of the finest seamen and greatest heroes of naval 
story have come out of our mercantile marine. 
But it is scarcely necessary to say this, seeing 
that the merchant service very greatly ante- 
dated the establishment of the Royal Navy. 
Even in Elizabeth's time one cannot think of 
Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, and the many 
other stars of that splendid galaxy of sea 
chieftains, as Queen's men in the sense that a 
Royal Naval officer is now a Queen's man. 
They were buccaneers; the merchants found 
them ships ; the Cinque Ports and the long- 



Early Boyhood 17 

shore yielded them crews who were composed 
of merchant sailors. The Navy grew out of 
the mercantile marine, and glorious as is the 
white flag, not less honourable is the red, 
whether for its memories of heroic combat or 
for its faithful discharge of the duties of that 
peace whose victories are not less renowned 
than war's. 

Life in the merchant service last century was 
certainly harder than life in the Royal Navy. 
The ships went full of men, and the forecastles 
were small. They were not only small, they 
were foul, under-deck, loathsome dungeons. 
They were leaky ; in head seas the water drained 
in and the seamen's chests floated about. A 
slush lamp would yield no light ; a lanthorn 
with a candle in it merely made darkness visible. 
The merchant sailor was infamously fed. The 
humane " scientist " never dreamt of casting his 
eyes in the direction of Jack's caboose. Cap- 
tain Cook worked a miracle by cleanliness and 
by never losing an opportunity of obtaining 
fresh provisions and vegetables. On the other 
hand, how it fared with the crews under Anson, 
who, though a bold and gallant ofiicer, needed 
certain qualities eminently to fit him for the 
high trust of that expedition, may be read in 
the narrative of his voyage. The crews of the 



1 8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

whole squadron had amounted to upwards of 
twelve hundred. Within one year of leaving 
England only three hundred and thirty-five 
remained alive. This fearful mortality was 
nearly wholly due to the scurvy. 

It was not to be supposed that little Nelson 
lived in the forecastle of Rathbone's ship. No 
doubt he slept aft in the cabin, and ate with the 
captain. Rathbone probably laid in a few sea 
delicacies. One reads in old yarns of the cap- 
tain of a frigate sitting down to a breakfast of 
coffee and toast and potted beef and tongue 
sliced a la Vauxhall. Rathbone would doubt- 
less keep his weather eye lifting in these mat- 
ters ; but we may take it that Nelson also ate 
the food of the merchant sailor, — his brine- 
hardened pork, beef which you could tease 
with thumb and forefinger as though it were 
oakum you picked ; pease soup which gave 
you a clear view of the peas at the bottom of 
the nauseous draught, and "duff" formed of 
dark flour and the greasy scum floating on top 
of the coppers. Therefore, so to speak, the 
lad shared in the sailors' mess-kid and drank 
of their scuttle-butt. Also he went aloft with 
the Jacks, helped reef, to light over to wind- 
ward and to haul out to leeward, and he may 
have assisted in furling a royal or topgallant sail. 



Early Boyhood 19 

They needed full crews in those days, for 
everything worked like " drawing teeth." The 
sheave jammed on its pin — they had no patent 
trusses — the yards came round slowly. All 
hands would be wanted time after time, and 
Nelson pulled and hauled with the rest. One 
recalls a passage in a naval novel published 
five years after the death of Nelson : " The 
lieutenant went on deck. * Mr. Echo,' said he 
to a midshipman, * send the after-guard aft here 
to hoist the main-topsail.' * Ay, ay, Sir ! * 
cried Mr. Echo, who, in concert with half-a- 
dozen other weekly account gentlemen, thus 
vociferated for several minutes at the break of 
the quarter-deck — 'Boatswain's Mate! Boat- 
swain's Mate ! I say, you Boatswain's Mate ! 
Send the after-guard aft here to the main-topsail 
halliards. Corporal of Marines ! Send the 
marines aft on the quarter-deck to clap on the 
main-topsail halliards. Master at Arms ! Go 
down below, and send all the idlers up ! Send 
all the idlers up ! Do you hear there. Master 
at Arms ? Send all the idlers up ! Stewards 
and servants, barbers and sweeps, cook's mates, 
and cook's mates' ministers, doctor's mates and 
loblolly boys ! After-Guard ! I don't see 
the After-Guard coming aft ! Where 's the 
Captain of the After-Guard ! Pass the word. 



20 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

there, in the waist for the Captain of the After- 
Guard ! " 

Nelson returned from this voyage to the 
West Indies a thorough sailor. He had 
brought with him a forecastle growl of those 
days : " Aft the more honour, forward the bet- 
ter man." And he was not far wrong. He 
was bronzed, and he had broadened. He had 
picked up a thorough knowledge of practical 
seamanship. In a man-of-war in reefing he 
would have sat on the cap and yelled to the 
men ; in Rathbone's ship he lay out on the 
yards and helped the seamen. He Hved with 
the crew of this vessel during an impressionable 
period of his life ; and there is little doubt that 
the sympathy he felt with sailors and his kind 
usage of them in after days, insomuch that he 
was more beloved by his crews than any captain 
or admiral I can find record of, was largely due 
to this voyage in a merchantman. Indeed, it is 
impossible to live with merchant seamen of a 
good sort, to share their privations, to lead their 
lives, to sit and yarn with them by the hour, 
and not part from their companionship without 
regret. The sentiment of the shipmate comes 
to you, and a habit of affection with the old life 
and the hearts you were thrown with will long 
survive your withdrawal from the career. 



Early Boyhood 21 

Many writers have expressed wonder that 
young Nelson should have returned from this 
voyage hating the Navy. He himself owns 
that he hated it, but speaks regretfully of the 
passing feeling. But his star of glory had 
climbed high in the heavens when he made this 
admission. He could easily have explained the 
real reason. In Rathbone's ship he enjoyed a 
liberty and freedom which were new sensations 
to him after the taut discipline of a man-of-war. 
He did not then consider that the Navy offered 
him any promise of reward for zeal and' dutiful- 
ness. He beheld in Rathbone a melancholy 
instance of what he might consider the country's 
ingratitude. Here was a man who had served 
the State to the utmost of his ability for some 
years, and who, finding that he was no longer 
needed, had returned for his daily bread to the 
service which he had quitted for a man-of-war. 
Then, again, young Nelson knew that at the 
end of a merchantman's voyage the sailor lined 
his pocket with good money and was a free 
man. Happily for our country, these thoughts 
did not long possess him. Only think of Ho- 
ratio Nelson, master mariner, never reaching 
anything higher in the sea-life than the com- 
mand, perhaps, of a small West Indiaman ! 



CHAPTER II 



I WILL BE A HERO 



PICTURES of the life of Nelson fall into 
groups at this period of his career. I am 
of those who do not place much faith in 
the traditionary stories told of him. You read 
that he said to his grandmother when she ex- 
pressed wonder that fear did not drive him 
home, " Fear never came near him." He robbed 
a pear-tree, not because he desired the fruit, but 
because his youthful comrades were afraid to 
begin. Such yarns might be told of anybody. 
His biographers carried their enthusiasm too 
far, and tried to find something remarkable and 
even preternatural in the most commonplace 
sayings and in the most insignificant actions of 
the boy. The old novelists had this trick. 
When they brought their heroes into the world 
they contrived that something amazing attended 
them, — a comet, a dream. 

It is said that Nelson was but indifferently 
educated as a lad. But how much knowledge 



"I will be a Hero" 23 

is a boy of twelve going to carry to sea with 
him ? I knew one who went to sea at the age 
of thirteen, and all the Latin and Greek he 
possessed went irrecoverably overboard the first 
night down Channel. This will be found true 
of most lads who go to sea, where they cease to 
read books because no books are there, and 
where all is hard work, high seas, and the occa- 
sional blessed relief of a spell below. 

Nelson, as we have seen, returned from his 
voyage from the West Indies with a hatred for 
the Navy. " It was many weeks," he says, 
" before I got in the least reconciled to a man- 
of-war, so deep was the prejudice rooted ; and 
what pains were taken to instil this erroneous 
principle in a young mind! " Captain Suckling 
was no doubt astonished at first ; he would then 
be much amused at the little chap's forecastle 
scorn of the noblest of all the callings. There 
is a picture to be made here by representing 
Nelson as one of the crew of the cutter and the 
decked long-boat of the " Triumph." By this 
means he became an adroit pilot in the naviga- 
tion of the Thames and Medway. He says 
that the two boats went as far as the North 
Foreland. No doubt young Nelson was put to 
heaving the lead. Suckling seems to have been 
cordially desirous that the lad should turn out a 



24 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

good sailor and an efficient officer ; in fact, he 
had sanctioned the boy's going in the boats on 
condition that, to quote Nelson's words, " he 
attended to his navigation." An old-world 
scene of river and Channel rises in a vision be- 
fore the mind's eye when one thinks of Nelson 
in that long-boat sounding through the Nore, 
through the Oaze Deep, past the dangerous 
Girdler, then slanting away south for Margate 
Sand until the great shoulder of the Foreland is 
abreast and the green waters of the Channel 
sparkle to the Downs. Flow quaint to our 
eyes would be the ships of all sorts heehng 
from the breeze ! Yonder a cutter with a pen- 
non as long as her hawser ; nearer, an EngHsh 
East Indiaman with high poop and stooping 
bows, and a grin of artillery in her weather-worn 
sides. Observe as she leans that her bottom 
is unsheathed ; the bright copper that was to 
shed a glare as of sunset upon the brine that 
creams along her side to windward and that 
added a delicate grace to the taller, shapelier, and 
statelier fabrics of later years, is seldom to be 
heard of in the merchant service at this date. 
Mark that round shape ; she is floating past 
Nelson's boat under wings of canvas stretched 
by yards as square as those of a thousand-ton 
ship of to-day. Her burthen is one hundred 



" I will be a Hero " 



25 



and eighty tons ; she is a snow-bound to Lis- 
bon. Passengers are on board of her, and the 
women come to the side to look at Nelson's 
boat as their little ship floats past. Not very- 
many years before, such another craft as this 
carried the famous Henry Fielding across seas 
to his grave. 

The navigation of the mouths of the Thames 
and Medway was heavily charged with peril of a 
dark night, when the lanterns were few, if any, 
and when they certainly did not sparkle as they 
now do. To Henry Taylor, an old sea-captain 
of North Shields, do we owe the first floating 
light that warned the mariner to beware of that 
deadliest of shoals, the Goodwin Sands. Even 
when Nelson had achieved greatness, and was 
lying in his frigate off Deal watching the 
French, the seaboard was almost lampless. 
Small wonder that those should have been the 
days of ambhng in sailing ships. In these times 
the first anxiety of the commander is to sight 
the familiar light. Then there was no light to 
make ; so a man hove his ship to if he was at 
all doubtful, mixed a second glass of grog, 
lighted a pipe, and smoked with philosophic 
submission to the maritime conditions of the 
period. One objection the Trinity House raised 
to beaconing the Goodwin Sands was curious. 



26 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

The Brethren were of opinion " That a hght 
would be of advantage to privateers, who might 
be so audacious as to attempt to cut vessels out 
of the Downs, for it would direct them through 
the Gull-stream." How frivolous and con- 
temptible, interpreted by the experiences of 
after years, are the objections urged against 
progress ! 

In this manner was Nelson employed until 
an application from the Royal Society induced 
the Government to equip and despatch a couple 
of vessels on a polar voyage. The ships were 
the " Racehorse," Captain Phipps, and the 
" Carcass," in charge of Captain Lutwidge. 
Nelson, at his own urgent request, was entered 
as a midshipman on board the " Carcass." He 
was probably haunted by curious imaginations 
of the North Pole and the North-West Passage. 
The mariner still continues to look for the 
North Pole, and it may be that before these 
lines are published he will have found it. The 
benefit of its discovery to mankind, however, the 
sailor has never yet attempted to explain. From 
the trembling stars of the West Indies to the 
white and death-like silence of the Polar regions 
was a wide range nicely calculated to test the 
constitution of a delicate young man. It seems 
to have done Nelson no harm. The voyage cer- 



" I will be a Hero " 



27 



tainly enlarged his experience as a sailor. They 
tell of him here that he wandered over the ice 
armed with a gun in pursuit of a polar bear, 
and when he was called to account for his rash- 
ness, he answered, " Please, sir, I wanted the 
skin for my father." There is nothing in this. 
The young fellow's foolhardiness merely sig- 
nified youth. It was not a characteristic. Pos- 
sibly the anecdote is untrue — the invention of 
early idolaters who have crowded his story with 
melodramatic imaginations. 

A voyage, however, into the bitter parallels 
which were penetrated by the two ships would 
certainly tend to harden a lad's power of endur- 
ance. The " Carcass " was a bomb, as they 
called it, a lubberly, motherly creation of the 
yards of those days ; something about three 
times as long as she was broad, with full but- 
tocks, and the run of an apple, and bows so 
square that, as old seamen used to say, they 
would drive an empty bottle a mile ahead with 
them. That the ships were equipped as later 
expeditions have been, will not be supposed. 
We do not hear of preserved provisions in 
those days, although canned meats were cer- 
tainly in use at sea early in this century. If 
Nelson was glad to go on this voyage, he was 
doubtless equally glad to return. The cabin 



28 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

accommodation must have been horrible ; the 
hatches on for warmth, and the air below-decks 
in consequence pestilential, for the conundrum 
of ventilating a ship had not yet been solved. 
In the " Sketch " Nelson communicated to 
M'Arthur, he gives us a faint glimpse of his 
life in the far North : " When the boats were 
fitting out to quit the two ships blocked up in 
the ice, I exerted myself to have the command 
of a four-oared cutter raised upon, which was 
given me, with twelve men ; and I prided my- 
self in fancying I could navigate her better than 
any boat in the ship." 

The two ships returned to England and paid 
off in October, 1773, on the 28th of which 
month one Mr. Kee, a Navy agent, received 
the following letter, delivered by young Nelson 
in person : " Mr. Bentham's Compliments to 
Mr. Kee ; he understands he is Agent to Mr. 
Surridge, the Master of the ' Seahorse,' should be 
obliged to him for a recommendation in favour 
of Horatio Nelson, a young lad, nephew to 
Captain Suckling, who is going in that ship. 
The Master is a necessary man for a young lad 
to be introduced to, therefore Mr. Bentham will 
be obliged to Mr. Kee for a Letter. The ships 
wait only for the Commodore's despatches." 
Nelson was not yet fifteen years of age. His 



" I will be a Hero " 



29 



character is shown in his resolution to thrust 
forward. Not many other young fellows of his 
years in the Royal Navy would have rolled so 
swift and nimble an eye over the Service for 
opportunities as did young Nelson, and the first 
that offered he seized. He tells us : "1 found 
that a Squadron was fitting out for the East 
Indies ; and nothing less than such a distant 
voyage could in the least satisfy my desire of 
maritime knowledge." He was rated midship- 
man in his Britannic Majesty's ship " Seahorse," 
of twenty guns, commanded by Captain George 
Farmer ; and he tells us that in this ship he 
visited almost every part of the East Indies, 
" from Bengal to Bussorah." We have no 
record that I am acquainted with, beyond Nel- 
son's own bald statement, of his life, actions, 
and service at this period. The squadron 
was in command of Commodore Sir Edward 
Hughes, of whose kindness to him Nelson 
speaks gratefully. The climate of the East 
Indies proved too much : he fell ill, and Sir 
Edward sent him to England as midshipman 
in the " Dolphin," of twenty guns, commanded by 
Captain James Pigot, whose kindness. Nelson 
himself tells us, at that time saved his life. 

If his earliest biographers are to be trusted, 
his ill-health during the passage home induced 



30 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

deep depression of mind. He thought of him- 
self as a plain country clergyman's son, a con- 
stant sufferer from ill-health, without influence 
to help him onwards. This might very well 
be : so ardent and enthusiastic a temperament 
as Nelson's would know many moods and be 
visited by many impulses. It is not hard to 
figure the poor young fellow leaning over the 
side of the " Dolphin," his eyes heedlessly follow- 
ing the foam-bells and the wreaths of cloud 
which swarmed through the blue brine to the 
white furrow at the rudder. If his health 
should force him to quit the ocean, what was 
he to do ? But it is told of him by Clarke and 
M'Arthur that after many fits of crushing de- 
spondency, his heart delivered itself of its 
burden of gloom by help of this sort : " I felt 
impressed with an idea that I should never rise 
in my profession. My mind was staggered 
with a view of the difficulties I had to surmount 
and the little interest I possessed. I could 
discover no means of reaching the object of my 
ambition. After a long, gloomy reverie, in 
which I almost wished myself overboard, a 
sudden flow of patriotism was kindled within 
me, and presented my King and country as 
my patrons. My mind exulted in the idea. 
* Well, then,' I exclaimed, * I will be a hero, 



" I will be a Hero " 



31 



and, confiding in Providence, I will brave every 
danger ! " I confess that a good deal of this 
sounds very much as if it had been dictated by 
Lady Hamilton to Harrison. " I will be a 
hero " ! There were few midshipmen in the 
Service who did not want to be heroes, and 
whether they confided in Providence or not, 
they were always ready to cover themselves 
with glory. It is asserted, however, that Nel- 
son would often afterwards declare to his friend 
Hardy that from that hour there was suspended 
before his mind's eye a radiant orb that courted 
him onward to renown. 

It will not be thought that Nelson at this 
time was entirely without interest ; for Captain 
Suckling was now Comptroller of the Navy, 
and his influence was considerable. One seems 
to find this in Nelson's own statement that 
" This ship [the " Dolphin " ] was paid off at 
Woolwich on the 24th of September, 1776. 
On the 26th I received an order from Sir James 
Douglas, who commanded at Portsmouth, to 
act as Lieutenant of the " Worcester " 64, 
Captain Mark Robinson, who was ordered to 
Gibraltar with a Convoy. In this ship I was 
at sea with Convoys till April 2nd, 1777, and 
in very bad weather ; but although my age 
might have been sufficient cause for not en- 



3 2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

trusting me with the charge of a watch, yet 
Captain Robinson used to say ' he feh as easy 
when I was upon deck as any officer in the 
ship.' " 

There was never a duty more thankless to 
the naval officer than that of convoying. His 
responsibilities were extremely heavy, and the 
insensibility of the merchant masters pro- 
foundly irritating. Ships of all sizes and dif- 
ferent rigs would go away down Channel in a 
huddle, convoyed — in other words, protected 
— by perhaps a line-of-battle ship and frigates ; 
but the strength of the men-of-war would de- 
pend upon the number of merchantmen they 
had to look after. It is difficult in this age to 
realise the audacity of the privateersman and 
the pirate in former years. These were gentry 
who, getting news of the sailing of a rich con- 
voy, say to the West Indies, or, some of 
them, to the East, would hover upon the skirts 
of the crowd and cut one or another off, as a 
thief might sneak the loitering sheep of a flock. 
But in war-time a sterner danger was to be 
apprehended in the apparition of a squadron 
of the enemy's ships. The merchantmen then 
had to stagger off as best they could, leaving 
the men-of-war to engage the foe and cover 
their retreat or escape. No severer trial to the 



" I will be a Hero " 



33 



temper did the naval officer experience than 
the obligation of keeping a large body of mer- 
chantmen within the circle of the horizon. 
Some would have a nimbler keel than others ; 
some were very dull sailers. While the courses 
of some of the ships ahead might be dipping 
in bland contempt of the signals of the men-of- 
war, nothing but the royals and topgallant 
sails of others would be visible astern. This 
might be very well in the day,- but when the 
darkness closed in with squalls of wind, hard- 
ening perhaps into dirty weather, what Was the 
naval officer to do ? Happy was the com- 
mander who brought the whole of his sheep, 
black and white, to their destination. 

Nelson must have speedily got sick of this 
work. Some fine sea pieces it doubtless pre- 
sented. Think of a little timberman out of 
the Gulf of Honduras climbing up the horizon 
with dingy canvas and sweating head-boards, 
and sailing into the midst of a convoy of a 
hundred sail with frigates and other war-vessels 
protecting them. The swarthy fellows leaning 
over her side might imagine that the skipper 
had lost his reckoning, and had carried them 
into some vast, noble river of commerce full of 
ships. This is among the vanished sights of 
the world. In war-time will there be convoy- 

3 



34 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

ing in this age of steam? In any case the 
naval commander will not labour under the 
same difficulties which drew the language of 
irritation, and often of profanity, from the 
mouths of his predecessors. The propeller 
will keep the steam-ships together, and the 
liner of twenty knots will slow down to accom- 
modate the tardy keel of the tramp of eight. 

When young Nelson returned to England 
he passed his examination at the Navy Office 
as lieutenant. His commission was dated 
April, 1777. He wrote to his brother William 
jokingly : " I passed my Degree as Master of 
Arts on the 9th instant." A copy of this 
"Passing Certificate" from the Record in the 
Tower is printed by Sir Harris Nicolas. Its 
quaintness would alone make it interesting — 

Lieutenant's Certificates. June 1762. 
May 1777. 

"In pursuance &c., of the 5th April, 1777, we have 
examined Mr. Horatio Nelson, who by certificate ap- 
pears to be more than twenty years of age, and find he 
has gone to sea more than six years in the Ships and 
Qualities undermentioned (viz.) — 

Raisonable .. Mid. .. ..0501 

'Tryumph .. Captain's Servant .. 1202 

.. Mid. .. .. o 10 I 5 

Carcass . Mid. .. ..0530 



-" I will be a Hero " 



35 



Triumph 


. . Captain' 


3 Servant 


O 


I 5 


Seahorse 


.. Mid. 




•■ o 5 


2 6 


" 


.. Able 




•• I 7 


I 6 


" 


.. Mid. 




..0 4 


3 2 


Dolphin 


.. Mid. 




.. o 6 


3 6 



" He produceth journals kept by himself in the ' Carcass,' 
' Seahorse,' ' Dolphin,' and ' Worcester,' and certificates 
from Captains Suckling, Lutwidge, Farmer, Pigott, and 
Robinson, of his diligence, &c.; he can splice, knot, 
reef a sail, &:c., and is qualified to do the duty of 
an Able seaman and Midshipman. Dated the 9th 
April 1777. M.S., Captain John Campbell, Captain 
Abraham North." 

When he went "up" for his examination 
Nelson is said to have entered the room in a 
very nervous state of mind. Nothing could 
be more likely ; but the examination and the 
examiners were by all the measurement of the 
poles asunder not so stiff, harsh, needlessly 
oppressive as they now are. In this age an 
examination is a lofty hurdle designed to arrest 
the passage of the ingenuous youth of this 
country into independence and a profession. 
As an example of the tyranny of certain pro- 
fessional examiners I may state this of my own 
certain knowledge : the examiner asked a 
young man who was " trying for " the Army 



36 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

a question in history. It was correctly an- 
swered. " Are you sure you are right ? Are 
you sure you are right ? " cries the examiner 
hotly, with the hope of forcing him into a 
blunder. Could anything be more unfair ? 
Nelson began nervously, but answered the 
questions correctly, and presently with spirit. 
Captain Suckling was present. He seems to 
have sat a silent spectator. When the ordeal 
was ended, he rose and introduced the youth 
to the examiners as his nephew. " Why did 
not you tell us this before ? " was asked. " Be- 
cause," was the answer, " I djd not wish the 
youngster to be favoured. I felt convinced that 
he would pass a good examination, and, gen- 
tlemen, you see I have not been disappointed." 

Next day Nelson was appointed to the 
" LowestofFe," Captain William Locker. " A 
fine frigate of thirty-two guns," writes Nelson 
joyously to his brother William ; " so I am 
now left in the world to shift for myself, which 
I hope I shall do so as to bring credit to my- 
self and friends." His association with Captain 
Locker was the greatest stroke of good fortune 
that could have befallen him. Throughout his 
life he was never weary of recalling his obliga- 
tions to Locker. This gallant officer had 
distinguished himself while first lieutenant of 



** I will be a Hero " 37 

the " Experiment " by boarding and taking the 
French " Telemaque." He had served under 
Hawke. His fine qualities, his genial nature, 
are eloquent of the man in the kindly, round, 
sailorly face that looks at you from his print. 
" In this ship," says Nelson, speaking of the 
" Lowestoffe," " I went to Jamaica, but even a 
frigate was not sufficiently active for my mind, 
and I got into a schooner, tender to the 
* Lowestoffe.' " This schooner was called the 
" Little Lucy," after a daughter of Captain 
Locker. In her Nelson went piloting, amid 
the intricacies of the Keys, to the north of San 
Domingo. I find but one noticeable incident 
in relation to his connection with the " Lowe- 
stoffe." The ship fell in with an American 
letter of marque. It was blowing fresh, and a 
high sea was running. The first lieutenant 
was ordered to go on board her. A boat was 
lowered, but the sea was so hollow that the 
lieutenant returned to the frigate professing his 
inability to get alongside the prize. Locker, 
much irritated, cried out, "Have I no officer 
in the ship who can board the prize? " The 
master ran to the gangway. Nelson stopped 
him. " It is my turn now," said he, " and if 
I come back it is yours." The story goes that 
a strong heave of sea carried Nelson and his 



38 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

boat's crew right over the American. He con- 
trived to board her at last. Years afterwards 
he communicated this anecdote to the editors 
of the " Naval Chronicle." He wrote with 
pardonable self-complacency. " This little in- 
cident," he says, " has often occurred to my 
mind ; and I know it is my disposition that 
difficulties and danger do but increase my de- 
sire of attempting them " — a statement which 
of itself, unsupported by the facts and acts of 
his life, must sufficiently refute the absurd 
opinion held by one or two that he was very 
wary and cautious, and without the brilliant dash 
and spirit which fascinated his contemporaries to 
hear of and charms us still to read about. 

Nothing noticeable is to be found in Nelson's 
service under Sir Peter Parker. But he was 
shortly to enter a scene of excitement to him- 
self, though the reader finds his doings a little 
colourless. He was about twenty years of age 
when he was appointed to the command of the 
" Badger," a small brig of war. From her he 
passed into the " Hinchinbroke." Whilst he 
was at sea news reached him of Count d'Es- 
taing's attempting an attack on Jamaica with 
a very large fleet and army from Martinique. 
The rumour proved false. But Jamaica was 
filled with alarms and the batteries of Port 




LIEUTENANT HORATIU NELSON VOLUNTEERING TO BOARD A I'RIZE 
IN A \TOLENT GALE, Nov. ao, 1777. 



Paintid by R. IfeslaU, R. A. 



" I will be a Hero " 



39 



Royal were intrusted to the command of Nel- 
son. He says proudly, " I need not say as 
the defence of this place was the key to the 
Port of the whole Naval force, the Town of 
Kingston and Spanish Town, it was the most 
important post in the whole island." 

He is described at this period as having been 
very negligent in his dress. Perhaps he was 
always so. At this time he presented a figure 
that might have passed as an aforemast hand. 
One cannot wonder at this. He was drenched 
with the sea. He had sucked at her nipple 
till his blood ran in brine. He was blunt in 
speech, of a sailorly frankness of manner. At 
a little later date Prince William Henry, after- 
wards William IV., met and described him as 
the merest boy of a captain he had ever beheld. 
His dress, he said, was worthy of attention. 
His lank and powdered hair was tied in a stiff 
Hessian tail of an extraordinary length ; and 
the grotesque appearance of the whole was 
heightened by the old-fashioned flaps of his 
waistcoat. The Prince stared at him. Never 
before had he met so singular a sailor. Lord 
Hood then introduced Nelson to the Prince, 
who was speedily captivated by his tact and 
conversation and by the enthusiasm which col- 
oured and glowed in his references to his pro- 



40 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

fession. The naval officer in those days seems 
to have enjoyed a wide license in the matter of 
dress. A story is told of Commodore Thomp- 
son. Clothed in a purser's duck frock and a 
common straw hat, he passed in his boat under 
the stern of the flag-ship. The Admiral (Jer- 
vis) viewed the Commodore with amazement. 
He then hailed the boat. " Barge ahoy ! Go 
and assist in towing that transport ! " This 
rebuke may not have been relished. It was, 
however, understood. The Commodore, sing- 
ing out in the language of the salt, " Ay, ay. 
Sir ! " headed his barge for the transport and 
helped to tow her. 

The expedition to St. Juan formed an excit- 
ing period to Nelson. But the narrative is a 
little dull to readers. The St. Juan expedition 
was most unfortunately planned ; the climate 
was intolerable ; the time, chosen with wonder- 
ful infelicity, was the rainy season ; the plain of 
war was a field of sHme. Men fell dead and were 
loathsome with corruption before their comrades 
had trudged out of sight of them. Nelson was 
nearly stung to death by a serpent. He barely 
escaped being poisoned through drinking at an 
impure spring. They ran short of food, and 
made broth by boiling monkeys. This delicacy 
was too much for Nelson's stomach. One 



" I will be a Hero" 41 

glimpse of the manly brutes simmering in the 
coppers capsized him then and lastingly so far 
as that particular sort of soup was concerned. 
He toiled, however, with noble effort, under- 
took work without any obligation to do so, cap- 
tured a battery at the head of a few seamen, 
and was rewarded by Sir Peter Parker's offering 
him the command of the " Janus," forty-four 
guns. A reward indeed to a man nearly dead 
of dysentery and fatigue ! 

He returned to Jamaica, where the ship then 
was, but so ill that he was unable to move. He 
was conveyed on shore in his cot to the lodging- 
house of a black nurse called Cuba Cornwallis. 
Sir Peter Parker took him to his own home 
and nursed him as if he had been his son, but 
to no purpose. There was no physic for the 
young man but the climate of England, and 
accordingly he sailed on September 4 in the 
" Lion." On his arrival at Portsmouth he went 
to Bath, and was treated by Dr. Woodward, a 
well-known physician of that time. It seems 
that in addition to his other ailments Nelson 
was afflicted with the gout. Writing to Captain 
Locker from Bath in January, 178 1, he says: 
" I have been so ill since I have been here that 
I was obliged to be carried to and from bed 
with the most excruciating tortures, but, thank 



42 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

God, I am now upon the mending hand. I am 
physicked three times a day, drink the waters 
three times, and bathe every other night, be- 
sides not drinking wine, which I think the 
worst of all." 

Not long since I was looking at the lodg- 
ings in which Nelson lay ill. They are in 
Pierrepont Street, and the house was kept 
by one Mr. Spry. Always a gloomy street, I 
should think, falling into decay in this age, 
though in it when at Bath dwelt the Lord 
Chesterfield who was called by Johnson " a 
lord amongst wits, and a wit amongst lords." 
Dr. Woodward found Nelson a very good 
patient. In February, 178 1 he was better, and 
had regained the use of his limbs except his 
left arm, which lay down his side as though it 
were paralysed. A pleasant story, told on the 
authority of Clarke and M'Arthur, is related of 
the physician who attended him. The doctor 
made a small charge. Nelson, surprised by the 
extreme moderateness of his fees, desired to 
increase them, on which Woodward said : " Pray, 
Captain Nelson, allow me to follow what I con- 
sider to be my professional duty. Your illness. 
Sir, has been brought on by serving your King 
and country, and, believe me, I love both too 
well to be able to receive any more." 



CHAPTER III 

" SWEETHEARTS AND WIVES " 

IN August, 178 1, Nelson found himself in 
command of the " Albemarle," a frigate 
of twenty-eight guns. He speaks with great 
pride of this appointment, and of his ship. He 
says she " has a bold entrance and cl?an run." 
Later on, in a letter to William Locker, he 
tells him that his ship is able to give the 
"Argo" (a new forty-four) the go-by. 

There is something magical in the very word 
frigate. All the romance of the glorious Ser- 
vice enters her. Even then — but how much 
fairer in later days ! — she was a thing of beauty. 
Whether at anchor, with all her yards symmet- 
rically braced, softly bowing to the south-east 
heave of sea in the Downs, or whether under 
full breasts, with courses climbing into milky 
heights of topgallant sail and royal, her sides 
brilliant with the lights of the deep and the 
day, here and there her decks spotted with the 
red coat of the marine, the frigate was ever to 
my mind the bravest and the most picturesque 



44 Pictures from the Life of. Nelson 

of all the thunderous guardians of these coasts. 
Marryat has described life on board of her. 
But he could not paint a ship, he could not 
tinge it with poetic colours, nor find in the 
fabric a hint of the spirit of the Great Mother 
whose spacious breast she walked. 

One there was, however, who could — Mi- 
chael Scott, the most masterful of them all in 
marine revelation. Here is a sketch by him, 
and it might stand as a portrait of the " Albe- 
marle," omitting only the " milk-white streak " : 
" The press of canvas she was carrying laid her 
over until her copper sheathing, clear as glass 
and glancing like gold, was seen high above 
the water throughout her whole length, above 
which rose her glossy jet-black bends, sur- 
mounted by a milk-white streak, broken at 
regular intervals into eleven goodly ports, from 
which the British cannon, ugly customers at 
the best, were grinning, tompion out, open- 
mouthed at us ; and above all the clean, well- 
stowed, white hammocks filled the nettings 
from tafFerel to cathead. Oh ! that I had been 
in one of them, snug on the berth-deck ! Aloft, 
a cloud of white sail swelled to the breeze till 
the cloth seemed inclined to say good-bye to 
the bolt-ropes, bending the masts like willow- 
wands (as if the devil, determined to beat Paga- 




CAPTAIN XHLSOX, ,781. AGE, 22. 
From tlu Painting by J. F. Rignud. By kind permission 0/ Earl Ndsoti. 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 45 

nini himself, was preparing fiddle-sticks to play 
a spring with on the cracking and straining 
weather shrouds and backstays), and tearing 
her sharp wedge-like bows out of the bowels 
of the long swell, until the cutwater and ten 
yards of the keel next to it were hove clean 
out of the sea, into which she would descend 
again with a roaring plunge, burying everything 
up to the hawse-holes, and driving the brine 
into mist, over the foretop, like vapour from a 
waterfall, through which, as she rose again, the 
bright red copper on her bow flashed back the 
sunbeams in momentary rainbows." 

I trust I shall be forgiven this lengthy ex- 
tract ; it is a sketch by one who lived closer to 
Nelson's time than we do, who wrote in years 
when the Nelson traditions and inspirations 
were the influence they had been in the time of 
Trafalgar. Not yet had the paddle-wheel been 
introduced to churn romance away astern. 
Small wonder that the seaman of old loved 
his ship. To him she was a thing of life. 
She could do everything but talk. He would 
have loved her better but for the Admiralty 
habit of shifting crews from one vessel to 
another. Nelson quarrelled with this short- 
sighted practice, knowing as a seaman that 
affection in a sailor is the flower of association. 



4-6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

I am not writing the life of Nelson : I am 
merely attempting to depict certain scenes of 
his splendid and devoted career. There is 
little, then, to talk about when we come to this 
passage of the " Albemarle." Again he was 
pestered by the convoy, and wrote : " Two 
hundred and sixty sail the convoy consisted 
of. They behaved as all convoys that ever I 
saw did : shamefully ill ; parting company every 
day." Before he and a portion of the ships he 
was looking after fetched Yarmouth Roads, a 
privateer was reported in the thick of the mer- 
chantmen. Nelson, in his frigate, gave chase, 
and rapidly overhauled the pirate, but after an 
hour's pursuit was obliged to return to the 
fleet, lest other sea-wolves should be among the 
clumsy craft. This pirate was a scoundrel 
named Fall. He commanded a cutter called 
the " Folkestone," and under French colours 
had fired upon several places on the coast of 
Scotland. It is interesting to think of Nelson 
chasing a pirate — of all the enemies of man 
the basest, the cruellest. " Give the privateers- 
man the stem ! " used to be the old cry. Other 
foes deserved mercy at the hands of their 
British captors ; the pirate none. 

One or two anecdotes of dramatic interest 
are related of Nelson in connection with this 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 47 

cruise. When he was off the coast of North 
America he captured an American fishing- 
schooner belonging to Cape Cod. As he was 
in want of a pilot he took the unfortunate 
master of the schooner on board the frigate, 
and the fellow served him very faithfully. 
That plant of rare cultivation, gratitude — as 
Dr. Johnson calls it — was one of the quaHties 
always in full bloom in the breast of the man 
whose individuality was even then the most 
fascinating afloat or ashore. When the poor 
skipper had completed his work. Nelson called 
him aft and said, "You have rendered us. a 
very essential service, and it is not the custom 
of English seamen to be ungrateful. In the 
name, therefore, and with the approbation of 
the officers of this ship, I return your schooner, 
and with it this certificate of your good conduct. 
Farewell, and may God bless you." There is 
a theatrical touch here, and many might suspect 
the accuracy of this story in consequence of that 
hysterical " God bless you." But Nelson was 
essentially an emotional man, just the sort of 
sailor out of the fulness of his heart to round 
off the cordial phrase of gratulation with a 
benediction. Anyway, there was long, and 
there may yet be, in existence the certificate 
which Nelson gave to Nathaniel Carver, master 



48 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

of the schooner " Harmony," on Aug. 17, 
1782. 

It is told that whilst at Quebec Nelson fell in 
love with an American lady. He would have 
been no true sailor had he not been fond of the 
girls. Doubtless he had poured down many a 
glass of grog to that famous old forecastle 
pledge, " Here 's the wind that blows, and the 
ship that goes, and the lass that loves a sailor ! " 
The " Albemarle " was ready for sea when 
Alexander Davison, a great friend of Nelson, 
who was standing upon the beach, saw the 
young commander coming ashore in a boat. 
"What brings you back.''" asked Davison. 
" I '11 walk with you to your house," answered 
Nelson, " and explain matters. The fact is, 
Davison, I find it utterly impossible to leave 
this place without again waiting on her whose 
society has so much added to its charms, and 
laying myself and my fortunes at her feet." 
Davison bluntly told him that, situated as 
he was, such a step would ruin him. Nelson 
persisted. Davison probably exerted physical 
force. He may have passed his arm through 
his friend's, and, eloquent with entreaty, but 
always moving towards the sea, got him to 
enter his boat that was ashore. He watched 
Nelson rowing away to his frigate, and no 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 49 

doubt considered that in rescuing him from this 
marriage he had preserved a valuable life. 

It does not seem that the image of the beauti- 
ful American lady long troubled him. She was 
not one of those shapes which " come not at an 
earthly call," and " will not depart when mortal 
voices bid." He was sent to the West Indies, 
but the fighting was over, and the " Albe- 
marle " returned to England in June, 1783. 
He took a lodging in Salisbury Street, Strand, 
and devoted himself to the task of procuring the 
wages for his crew, whom with delightful sym- 
pathy he calls "my good fellows!' Such was 
his popularity that when his ship was paid off, 
the whole of the men offered, if he could get 
another ship, to enter for her immediately. He 
seems, however, to have had no thought of 
going to sea just then. Living on board ship 
cost more than he could afford. Extravagance 
of living probably attended King George's 
entering his third son. Prince William, as mid- 
shipman in the Navy with the idea of popular- 
ising the Service. I do not know that this 
device made forecastle Jack much more nu- 
merous, though its object was this primarily ; 
but it certainly filled the quarter-deck with nobs 
and snobs. A derisive story is told of a lieu- 
tenant of a man-of-war hailing the mizzen- 

4 



50 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

topsail yard, and shouting : " My lords and 
gentlemen, and all you right honourable lub- 
bers, bear a hand and roll up that sail and lay 
down ! " This influx of swells doubtless 
brought extravagance of living along with it, 
and Nelson, who had nothing but his pay to 
support him, remained ashore. 

In October he applied for leave to visit France 
on " my private occasions." And early in 
November we find him dating a letter to 
William Locker at St. Omer. Nelson in 
France ! Nelson in that country whose foun- 
dations his thunders of the Nile and Trafalgar 
were to shake to their heart ! In after years 
" Down, down with the French ! " was his 
ceaseless cry. He sent William Locker a very 
diverting account of his journey. They left 
Dover at seven o'clock, put to sea with a fine 
north-west wind, and at half-past ten " we were 
safe at breakfast in Monsieur Grandsire's house 
at Calais." Nelson was much amused by the 
ridiculous figure of the postilions in their jack- 
boots, and their rats of horses. He slept at 
Marquise on a straw bed, and supped off two 
pigeons served on a dirty cloth, with wooden- 
handled knives. At Montreuil he lodged in a 
house whose landlord had recommended Le 
Fleur to Sterne. The voyagers steered for St. 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 5 1 

Omer, where they fell in with two naval cap- 
tains. Ball and Sheppard. One was afterwards 
Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander John Ball, and 
Nelson's close friend. The other died Vice- 
Admiral of the Red. When Nelson saw them, 
he conceived a strong dislike to them both ; 
they wore fine epaulettes, and he thought them 
great coxcombs for that. Nevertheless, a few 
years later — that is, in 1795 — epaulettes were 
ordered to be worn as part of the British naval 
uniform. 

Nelson's own description of his travels into 
France, as addressed to his brother, is too good 
to be omitted. His style is quaint and old- 
fashioned. We see him here as an observer of 
other things than sea affairs : " On Tuesday 
morning, the 21st ult., I set off from Salisbury 
St. in company with Captain Macnamara of the 
Navy, an old messmate of mine. I dined with 
Captain Locker, my old Captain, at Mailing in 
Kent, and spent the night at his house. The 
next day we slept at Dover, and on Thursday 
morning we left England with a fine wind. In 
three hours and twenty minutes we were at 
breakfast in Monsieur Grandsire's at Calais. 
The quick transition struck me much. The 
manners, houses and eating so very different to 
what we have in England. I had thoughts of 



52 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

fixing at Montreuil, about sixty miles from 
Calais, in the road to Paris. We set off en 
postey they called it ; we did not get on more 
than four miles an hour. Such carriages^ such 
horses^ such drivers^ and such boots you would 
have been ready to burst with laughing at the 
ridiculous figure they made together. The 
roads were paved with stones ; therefijre by 
the time we had travelled fifteen miles, we were 
pretty well shook up, and heartily tired. We 
stopped at an inn, they called it — a clean pig- 
stye is far preferable. They showed us into a 
dirty room with two straw beds : they were 
clean ; that was all they could brag of. How- 
ever, after a good laugh we went to bed and 
slept very soundly till morning. How different 
to what we had found the day before at Dover ! 
" At daylight we set off, breakfasted at Bou- 
logne, and got to Montreuil in the evening. 
This day we passed through the finest country 
my eyes ever beheld ; not a spot (as big as my 
hand) but was in the highest cultivation, finely 
diversified with stately woods. Sometimes for 
two miles together you would suppose you were 
in a gentleman's park. The roads are mostly 
planted on each side with trees, so that you 
drive in almost a continual avenue, but amidst 
such plenty they are poor indeed. Montreuil 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 53 

is situated upon a small hill, in the middle of a 
large plain, which extends as far as the eye can 
reach, except towards the sea which is about 
twelve miles from it. Game here was in the 
greatest abundance ; partridges, pheasants, wood- 
cocks, snipes, hare, etc., etc., as cheap as you 
can possibly imagine. Partridges two pence 
halfpenny a brace, a noble turkey fifteen pence 
and everything else in proportion. You will 
suppose that it was with great regret we turned 
our backs upon such an agreeable place, but 
not a man that understood English, which was 
necessary to learn me French, could be found 
in the place. Our landlord at the inn is the 
same man that recommended Le Fleur to Sterne. 
From this place we proceeded on to Abbeville, 
ninety miles from Calais. This was a large 
town, well fortified, but even there I could not 
be accommodated to my wish : nor indeed good 
masters, that is, that understood grammatically. 
At last I determined to come here, which 
indeed is what we ought to have done at first, 
therefore by the time we arrived here, which 
was Tuesday week, we had travelled a hundred 
and fifty miles, but upon the whole I was not 
displeased with our excursion. This is by 
much the pleasantest and cleanest Town I have 
seen in France. It is very strongly fortified. 



54 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

and a large garrison. We had good rooms in 
a pleasant French family, where are two very- 
agreeable young ladies, one of whom is so polite 
as to make our breakfast for us, and generally 
when we are at home, drink tea and spend the 
evening with us. I exert myself, you will sup- 
pose, in the French language, that I may have 
the pleasure of talking to them ; and French 
ladies make full as much use of their tongues as 
our English ones. We have a most pleasant 
society of English at this place. We have sel- 
dom a day but we are invited somewhere, which 
I avoid as much as possible that I may acquire 
the French, and there are three families that I 
visit en famille ; that visiting pleases me far 
beyond the other. My paper is done : in my 
next I shall proceed ; I have much to say. 
To-day I dine with an English clergyman, a 
Mr. Andrews, who has two very beautiful 
young ladies, daughters. I must take care of 
my heart, I assure you." 

Nelson began to learn French. He made 
slow progress. He made quicker progress in 
love. He met, as we see by his letter, the 
daughters of an English clergyman named An- 
drews, and lost his heart to one of them. The 
memory of the American beauty went out of 
his head. " She has such accomplishments," he 



*' Sweethearts and Wives " 



S5 



says, speaking of the girl, " that had I a million 
of money I am sure I should at this moment 
make her an offer of them ; my income at pres- 
ent is by far too small to think of marriage, and 
she has no fortune." Love mastered him, for 
here was a greater conqueror even than Nelson. 
What broadside equals in fatefulness the arch 
and sparkling glance of a beautiful woman's 
eyes ? Nelson hauled down his flag, but that 
was all he could do ; the girl declined to take 
possession of the prize whose colours he had 
struck to her. 

How perfectly human, genial, tender ; how in 
full touch with all human sympathy was the 
noble nature of this glorious little man, may be 
seen in his letter to his uncle William Suckling, 
dated Jan. 14, 1784. He sets out with a sol- 
emn countenance; he is axiomatic: "There 
arrives in general a time in 3. man's life (who 
has friends) that either they place him in life in 
a situation that makes his application for any- 
thing farther totally unnecessary or give him 
help in a pecuniary way if they can afford and 
he deserves it." And then he tells Suckling that 
he is in love. The critical moment of his life 
has arrived ; he is to be happy or miserable — 
it depends solely on Suckling. His income, 
Nelson points out, does not exceed one hundred 



56 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

and thirty pounds a year. Miss Andrews has but 
one thousand pounds to her fortune, and she 
and Horatio can't live upon that. Will Suckling, 
then, make him a yearly allowance of one hun- 
dred pounds until he has increased his own in- 
come to that extent ? He winds up in the 
well-known language of the fond shepherd : " I 
am prepared to hear your refusal, and have fixed 
my resolution if that should happen ; but in 
every situation I shall be a well-wisher to you 
and your family, and pray they or you may 
never know the pangs which at this instant tear 
my heart." To think of Mr. Suckling, of the 
Customs, with his heart torn by pangs of love ! 

Needless to say. Nelson did not marry the 
lady. His liberal uncle would have acceded to 
his wishes, but the lady declined. This was 
Nelson's one defeat, but it happened ashore, and 
must not find a place in the list of his battles. 

On March 19, 1784, he wrote to his brother, 
who was now the Reverend William Nelson, 
that on the preceding day he was appointed to 
the command of the " Boreas " frigate. The 
ship was full of young midshipmen, and his 
treatment of them is but another example of his 
sweet and noble character. It does not seem, 
however, that his midshipmen were always as 
grateful to him as they should have proved. 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 57 

He tells in his own rough way toWilliam Locker, 
whilst he lies in the Downs, the story of an un- 
grateful midshipman, whose name, I gather from 
Harris, is sunk in oblivion. It will be seen by 
his letter that captains of ships had other anx- 
ieties than fighting them and commanding them 
only. 

" I need not say it to you, but what in the 
name of God could it be to me whether a Mid- 
shipman in my Ship had not a farthing or fifty 
pounds a year ? Therefore, now I must tell 
you, as far as I know, his wish to leave the ship. 
When he came on board I sent him into Mr. 
Bromwich's mess, where he was two or three 
days. In that time they spoke to me, that they 
hoped I would not take it amiss, but they could 
not think of keeping that young man (I forget 
his name) in their mess, as he could not pay his 
part in their small expenses. I am sure that 
you will not think I should attempt to force any 
person upon people who were behaving exceed- 
ingly well in the Ship (which would have been 
tyrannical in the highest degree) against their 
inclination. Whether the lad sent to speak to 
me, or I sent for him, I do not recollect, but I 
told him of what the mess had said. He then 
seemed very uneasy at what I told him, and 
said he could not afford to live in a mess that 



5 8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

cost anything, and then said he wished to 
leave the ship. The next day he pressed me 
much to discharge him, as he could not live in 
any of the mid-messes. Much against my in- 
clination I did discharge him. What he took 
the idea of £1,0 a year from, I know not; for 
I declare I never opened my lips to him upon 
the subject. A youngster in the Ship, whose 
friends are Norfolk people, who had not made 
an allowance for their son, I took upon me to 
allow £10 a year. 

" I assure you I hold myself under very great 
obligations to you, that you asserted it was an 
infamous lie ! Had I in the least suspected the 
story he has told, he should have stayed on 
board and might have lived as he pleased. It 
was my endeavouring to put him in a comfort- 
able situation that has made any person speak 
ill of me. If he had come into the ship as 
many hundred youngsters of the kind do, and 
the Captain had {a word illegible^ to him, or of 
him to anybody for . . . months, I should 
have had no trouble about him." 

Some of the lads of the " Boreas " were afraid 
to climb the masts, and, let me say, if you are 
constitutionally nervous, the task of chmbing 
the rigging, straining, like a fly on the ceiling, 
over the futtock shrouds into the top, thence to 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 59 

the cross-trees, upwards to the giddy height of 
the royal yard, is painful and distressing. The 
horizon has opened into boundlessness, the 
large surge has dwindled into a ripple, the fig- 
ures moving upon the decks are pigmies ; the 
sails fall from you in swelling rounds of fleece- 
like clouds filled with the thunder and the music 
of the wind. There you are perched close to 
heaven ; the melodies of the rigging might be 
the quiring of the opening skies ; but how to 
get down ? Nelson quite understood all this, 
and to encourage the timorous among the mid- 
shipmen gazing with dread aloft, he would say : 
" I am going a race to the masthead, and beg 
I may meet you there," then would spring into 
the lee-shrouds, while the nervous younkers 
squeezed the tar out of the weather-rigging. 
When they met in the top he would hearten the 
lads with cheerful speech and say : " How much 
any person was to be pitied who could fancy 
there was any danger or even anything disagree- 
able in the attempt ! " 

Can you wonder that this man should have 
been beloved by his officers and crew ^ More- 
over, he was studious, at the cost of all personal 
inconvenience, to set a good example. He was 
always first to arrive on deck at noon to take an 
observation. Every day he would enter the 



6o Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

school-room of the frigate and listen and watch 
while the lads worked. This we have on the 
authority of Lady Hughes. He was carrying 
her Ladyship and her daughter to the West In- 
dies. Lady Hughes was the wife of Admiral 
Sir Richard Hughes, of whom, after his arrival, 
Nelson would think and write with contempt 
and aversion as Commander-in-Chief Lady 
Hughes he equally disliked. He could not 
know the sympathy and intelligence with which 
she was observing him during the passage. 
With Nelson also went his brother, the Rev. 
William, as chaplain. This person makes a 
very disagreeable figure upon the Nelsonian 
stage, and the more one reads about him the less 
one likes him. He was a born cadger, sleek, 
insincere, clamorous with professions when some- 
thing was to be got, a round man in a square 
hole. The character of his old father stands 
high beside his ; though every one must wonder 
that a clergyman should sanction such an asso- 
ciation as that of Lord Nelson with Lady 
Hamilton by expressing willingness to dwell 
under the woman's roof The worst that one 
can say of old Edmund Nelson is that he was a 
bore ; he carried the clerical habit of sermonis- 
ing people who stood in no need of his admo- 
nitions, to a degree that must often have set 



" Sweethearts and Wives '* 61 

Nelson's teeth on edge. The Rev. William, 
sick of the sea and stung by mosquitoes, left 
the ship shortly after her arrival. 

Loyalty and dutifulness rendered Nelson's 
life a very uneasy one in this period of his 
career. The Americans had ceased to be 
colonists, and our Navigation Laws forbade 
the foreigner from trading in British posses- 
sions. When Nelson came upon the scene 
he found that a very large illegal traffic was 
being carried on, and, to his disgust, he dis- 
covered that Sir Richard Hughes, fafthlessly 
indifferent to British interests, was secretly 
conniving at what was going forward. Nelson 
forthwith went to work to suppress all this 
wrong-doing. He captured many vessels. It 
will not be supposed that his zeal was much 
appreciated. He retorted with a saying worthy 
of some great admiral or general of Cromwell 
— that men-of-war were sent abroad for other 
purposes than to be made a show of. He 
recommended the indignant Sir Richard Hughes 
to study the Navigation Acts. Sir Thomas 
Shirley, Governor of the Leeward Islands, a 
beef-faced man with a liver enriched by draughts 
of sangaree, blustered out to Nelson that, " By 
God, Sah ! old generals are not in the habit 
of taking advice from young gentlemen, Sah ! '* 



62 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

" I am as old as the Prime Minister of Eng- 
land," answered Nelson, contemptuously, " and 
think myself as capable of commanding one of 
his Majesty's ships as that Minister is of 
governing the State." 

But we will pass from this dry record of 
Navigation Acts and contraband Yankees to 
a passage of pure romance. The beautiful 
American had been one ; Miss Andrews had 
been another ; and now in a third he was to 
meet his fate. When he was at the Island of 
Nevis he went ashore to dine at the house of 
a Mr. Herbert, who was then President of the 
island. At the table sat a lady who seemed 
to find something very curious and interesting 
in the little captain of the " Boreas." She 
watched him attentively, and when she went 
home she wrote an amusing account of him to 
Mrs. Nisbet, a great friend of hers then at 
St. Kitts. Little did this good and critical 
young woman foresee the issue her underlined 
and chatty letter was all unconsciously shaping. 

Who was this lady's great friend, Mrs, 
Fanny Nisbet ? She was niece of the Mr. 
Herbert with whom Nelson dined : a widow 
with one child ; her husband, Josiah Nisbet, 
had died mad eighteen months after his mar- 
riage. To Mrs. Nisbet the critical lady who 



** Sweethearts and Wives " 6 '2 

had sat at dinner with Nelson described how 
the httle captain came up just before the meal 
was ready, much heated; he was very silent, 
though he seemed to think the more. He 
drank no wine till the toasts of the King, the 
Queen, the Royal Family, and Lord Hood were 
given, and then " this strange man," continues 
Mrs. Nisbet's correspondent, " regularly filled 
his glass and observed that those were always 
bumper toasts with him." After he had passed 
the bottle he sank into silence. The lady's 
critical inspection of him became a sort of 
trouble to her. She must have stared very 
hard, and if she was not pretty Nelson might 
not have felt flattered. She tells her corre- 
spondent that she was very much puzzled ; 
she could not make out the little man's real 
character. His demeanour was stern and re- 
served, but she noticed that when he spoke he 
always said something worth attention. " If 
you, Fanny, had been there you would have 
made something of him ; for you have been in 
the habit of attending to these odd sort of 
people." 

Not many months later this " odd sort of 
person," as the lady would have termed him, 
was writing thus at seven in the evening to 
Mrs. Fanny Nisbet : " As you begin to know 



64 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

something about sailors, have you not often 
heard that salt water and absence always wash 
away love ? Now, I am such a heretic as not 
to believe that Faith, for, behold, every morn- 
ing since my arrival I have had six pails of salt 
water at daylight poured upon my head, and 
instead of finding what the seamen say to be 
true, I perceive the contrary effect ; and if it 
goes on so contrary to the prescription you 
must see me before my fixed time. At first 
I bore absence tolerably, but now it is almost 
insupportable, and by and by I expect it will 
be quite so." 

He was head over ears in love ; he had met 
the young widow at Nevis, and found her very 
pretty, young, of a most engaging disposition, 
and very cultivated. His letters to her show 
all the warmth of a devoted lover. The apolo- 
gists of Nelson's connection with Lady Hamil- 
ton represented Fanny Nisbet, afterwards Lady 
Nelson, as cold, wanting in tact and in sym- 
pathy with her husband's noble profession. 
But he had to wait until he met Lady Hamilton 
to find this out. 

He wrote to his uncle, William Suckling, 
asking for pecuniary help, — in short, the gift 
of a thousand pounds. Suckhng appears to 
have behaved kindly, for Nelson wrote to his 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 6 c 

Fanny, March 3; 1786: "From my uncle 
Suckling I have a very kind letter, saying he 
will do every thing in his power to add to 
my happiness; and if I should want it, that 
he will give me pecuniary assistance." Then, 
again, there was Fanny's uncle, Mr. Herbert, 
a very rich man as wealth went in those days 
— his negroes and plantation stock were valued 
at sixty thousand pounds. Of this gentleman 
Nelson wrote as follows to Suckling : " But 
I must describe Herbert to you, that you 
may know exactly how I stand ; foi- when 
we apply for advice, we must tell all cir- 
cumstances. Herbert is very rich and very 
proud — he has an only daughter, and this 
niece, who (sic) he looks upon in the same 
light, if not higher. I have lived at his 
house when at Nevis, since June last, and am 
a great favorite of his. I have told him that 
I am as poor as Job ; but he tells me he likes 
me, and I am descended from a good family, 
which his pride likes ; but he also says, * Nelson, 
I am proud, and I must live like myself, there- 
fore I can't do much in my lifetime : when I 
die she shall have twenty thousand pounds ; 
and if my daughter dies before me she shall 
possess the major part of my property. I in- 
tend going to England in 1787 and remaining 

5 



66 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

there my life ; therefore if you two can live 
happily together till that event takes place you 
have my consent.' This is exactly my situa- 
tion with him ; and I know the way to get to 
him to give me most, is not to appear to want 
it : thus circumstanced, who can I apply to but 
you r 

A striking and characteristic anecdote is re- 
lated of Nelson at this time. One day, while 
the " Boreas " was lying at anchor in Nevis 
Road, a French frigate passed to leeward, close 
along shore. It reached Nelson's ears that 
the object of the frigate's presence in those 
waters was to survey the British West India 
Islands, for which purpose she had on board 
two general officers and some engineers. Nel- 
son at once weighed and gave chase. He 
found her next day at anchor in the Road of 
St. Eustatia, and he anchored his frigate about 
two cables' lengths on the Frenchman's quarter. 
There was much civility, of course : mutual 
salutes, bows, and grimaces; and then the 
Dutch Governor invited Nelson and his officers 
to meet the French officers at dinner. They 
met; the scene is full of humour to an English 
reader, for you are quite sure of the way in 
which a sea affair will be worked out when 
Nelson has the handling of it and when he is 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 67 

dealing with Frenchmen. The conversation 
was brisk, the wine went the rounds ; then 
Nelson spoke. " I understand, Sir," he said 
in effect, addressing the French commander, 
" that it is your intention to visit the English 
islands, and, this being so, I consider it my 
duty to accompany you in my frigate that at- 
tention may be paid to the officers of his most 
Christian Majesty, which I am sure every 
Englishman in the islands will be proud of an 
opportunity of doing." The offer was by no 
means relished by the French officers, who, 
with all contortions of native politeness, begged 
to be excused from Nelson's attendance, as their 
intention was merely to cruise round the islands 
without stopping at any one of them. Nelson, 
however, was not to be outdone in civility, and 
his ship continued to ride hard by the French 
frigate. His drift could not be mistaken. In 
a few days the Frenchmen abandoned their 
project, got under way, and beat up to Mar- 
tinique. Nelson beat up to Barbadoes, thus 
contriving to keep the Frenchman in sight 
until he reached the island he had come from. 
He refers to this thorough " Nelson touch " 
in a letter to Mrs. Nisbet : " For the last week 
a French man-of-war has been here [he means 
in West Indian waters], and going about with 



68 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

them so much in the sun has given me violent 
headaches." 

Nelson married Fanny Nisbet March 12, 
1787. The " Pegasus," in command of Prince 
William Henry, was on that station at this time 
under Nelson, and the Prince had expressed his 
desire to be present at the marriage, that he 
might give the bride away. This he did, and 
very naturally Nelson felt himself extremely 
honoured. The Prince was unquestionably a 
sincere admirer of Nelson. He seems to have 
expounded him with a prophetic gaze. The 
relations of the two in the West Indies make 
pleasant reading : on the Prince's part all was 
sailorly sympathy, kindness without condescen- 
sion, with just so much of reserve as should dis- 
tinguish his exalted position and make his friend 
easy by perception that the character of his 
friendship was nicely understood ; while, on 
Nelson's, all was good taste and tact, every- 
where self-respect and dignity strongly coloured 
by loyalty; in short, not a hint of snobbishness. 
His character greatly rises in one's esteem in 
the perusal of*this intercourse. 

Fanny's maiden name had been Woolward. 
She was born about 1763, and was some twenty- 
four years old when she married Nelson. A 
month after this marriage the " Boreas " was 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 69 

found to be rotten ; and Nelson, writing from 
Antigua to the Admiralty, says, " that if the 
ship does not reach England before the hurri- 
cane season, she will be too bad for the voyage." 
She reached Spithead July 4, 1787, but Mrs. 
Nelson made the voyage home in a merchant- 
man. Hard times were now at hand for Nel- 
son. His means were small. He could not 
o"btain employment. It was some months after 
her arrival before the " Boreas " was paid off. 
And Nelson complains that he was as much 
divorced from his wife as if he had remained in 
the West Indies. The frigate lay at the Nore, 
and sometimes seven miles from the land, so 
says Nelson, on impress service. It is declared 
that Nelson felt his neglect so keenly that had 
he possessed an independency he never would 
have gone to sea again. Sir Harris Nicolas 
finds no foundation for this in his " Correspond- 
ence." Professor Laughton is also very posi- 
tive. " There is absolutely no reason," he says, 
" to give the slightest credence to the story that, 
in his extreme disgust, he determined to throw 
up his commission and quit the service." To 
judge by this writer, not only what the hero did, 
but what he thought, must be strictly in corre- 
spondence with admiralty requirements. Long 
subsequent to this date Nelson wrote that he 



JO Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

was a man, and that he could not \\^\'^ feeling as 
a man. No one was more sensitive to neglect ; 
no man of genius more thoroughly understood 
his own powers and possibilities. He had done 
great work for the country in the West Indies, 
and for some years he was to remain without 
employment. Would not the ardent soul of 
such a man fret ? But does it not fret in that 
" Correspondence " which Nicholas himself 
edited ? How does Nelson write, for instance, 
on May 6, 1788 ? "You have given up all the 
toils and anxieties of business, whilst I must 
still buffet the waves — in search of what ? That 
thing called Honour is now, alas ! thought of no 
more. My integrity cannot be mended, I hope, 
but my fortune, God knows, has grown worse 
for the Service : so much for serving my 
country." Again, it is sad to find him writing 
in September, 1789 : " Not being a man of for- 
tune is a crime which I cannot get over, and 
therefore none of the Great care about me. I 
am now commencing Farmer, — not a very large 
one, you will conceive, but enough for amuse- 
ment. Shoot I cannot, therefore I have not 
taken out a license ; but notwithstanding the 
neglect I have met with, I am happy, and now 
I see the propriety of not having built my 
hopes on such sandy foundations as the friend- 



" Sweethearts and Wives " 71 

ships of the Great." And again it is sad to 
find him in June, 1790, writing to the Duke of 
Clarence: " My not being appointed to a ship 
is so very mortifying that I cannot find words 
to express what I feel on the occasion ; and 
when I reflect on your Royal Highness's conde- 
scension in mentioning me to Lord Chatham, I 
am the more hurt and surprised. Sure I am, 
that I have ever been a zealous and faithful 
Servant, and never intentionally have com- 
mitted any errors ; especially as till very lately 
I have been honoured by the notice of the 
Admiralty." 

In a note in the " Despatches and Letters," 
Nicolas, basing his remarks upon the informa- 
tion of Clarke and M 'Arthur, states that the 
" Boreas " payed off early in the summer of 
1787. Nelson had received several rebukes or 
reprimands from the Admiralty ; his correspond- 
ence respecting frauds in the Public Depart- 
ments had been coldly received ; he had incurred 
great anxiety and exposed himself to heavy re- 
sponsibility in supporting the commercial in- 
terest of his country, and on his return to 
England the " Boreas " was made a receiving 
ship for impressed seamen at the Nore. This 
treatment is stated to have so irritated his mind 
that he said to the senior officer in the River 



72 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Medway : " I now rejoice at the ' Boreas ' 
being ordered to be paid off. which will release 
me for ever from an ungrateful Service, as it is 
my firm and unalterable determination never 
again to set my foot on board a King's Ship. 
Immediately after my arrival in Town I shall 
wait on the First Lord of the Admiralty and 
resign my Commission." A resolution which 
was happily prevented by his receiving a very 
civil letter from Lord Howe, desiring to see 
him in town. The interview proved satisfac- 
tory to both parties, and Lord Howe offered 
to present him to the King at the next 
Levee, when he was honoured with a gracious 
reception. 

There is no more painful reading than Nel- 
son's applications for a ship. He asks for the 
" Raisonnable," his first sea-home ; nay, it is 
asserted, and Nicolas scarcely denies, that he 
begged command of even a cock-boat. He 
went to live with his wife at Burnham Thorpe. 
His irritable spirit throbs like a pulse of fever in 
the picture of his life at this time. There could 
be no repose when Nelson is unemployed and 
ashore. But little of the truly rural spirit enters 
into the account his biographers give of his kill- 
ing the time by digging in his father's garden, 
hunting for birds'-nests with his wife, shooting 



'* Sweethearts and Wives " 



73 



with a gun, but so awkwardly that his piece 
was a menace to the Hves of everything but the 
object he aimed at. They tell us he was fond 
of coursing. He mused upon charts, read the 
current prints, drew plans. One day he went 
to the fair to buy a pony. Whilst he was 
absent, two rough fellows arrived at the Par- 
sonage and asked for Captain Nelson. Mrs. 
Nelson informed them that he was out, where- 
upon they handed her a writ on the part of the 
American captains, who laid their damages at 
many thousands. Nelson's sensations ' on his 
return may be imagined. He is reported to 
have exclaimed : " If the Government will not 
support me, I will leave the country." It is 
even declared that he wrote to the Treasury 
and threatened that if a satisfactory answer were 
not sent him by return of post he would take 
refuge in France. He was to go first ; and 
Mrs. Nelson was to follow, ten days later, under 
the care of his elder brother, Maurice. If this 
is a lie, it is very circumstantially related by 
those whom Nicolas frequently quotes. 

War gave him his chance, but not till the 
early months of 1793. On January 7 in that 
year. Lord Chatham, with apologies for neglect, 
offered him the command of a sixty-four gun- 
ship, and on January 30 he was appointed to 



74 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

the " Agamemnon." " Post nubila Phcebus ! " 
he wrote to his wife, " after clouds comes sun- 
shine. The Admiralty so smile upon me that 
really I am as much surprised as when they 
frowned." 



CHAPTER IV 



ST. VINCENT 



ON the forenoon of the nth of February, 
1797, two British frigates, the " Min- 
erve " and " Romulus," were lying at anchor 
off the then new mole in the Bay of Gibraltar. 
At Algeciras floated three Spanish line-of-battle 
ships. The wind blew a fresh breeze from the 
east, and it was a fine morning. 

Presently the " Minerve," which flew a Com- 
modore's broad pennant at her mast-head, got 
under way. There was never a fairer sight 
than the picture of a British frigate getting her 
anchor and flashing into canvas. As if by 
magic she was clothed from waterway to royal 
yard-arm, and heeling from the breeze and under 
command of the helm, while a foreigner would 
be leisurely sheeting home his topsails, and get- 
ting into a mess forward with his jib sheets to 
windward. 

No sooner had the " Minerve " started than 
two of the three Spanish line-of-battle ships 
were observed to be in motion. In short, it 



76 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

was speedily seen that they intended to chase 
the British frigate. Spain had declared war 
against Great Britain and was in coalition with 
France, and she had sent forth upon those seas 
which she never could command a flotilla de- 
signed to annihilate that ancient foe, whose 
merchant seamen, led by buccaneering chief- 
tains, had swept her Armada up Channel into 
the North Sea, and so left it to struggle round 
about to its own destruction. 

On the quarter-deck of the " Minerve " two 
persons were walking. One was Commodore 
Nelson, whose broad pennant was at the mast- 
head ; the other was Colonel Drinkwater, after- 
wards Bethune. Since Nelson's appointment 
to the " Agamemnon " he had seen a good deal 
of service ; he had fought in a not very glorious 
battle with the French, thanks to the withering 
prudence of Hotham, the Admiral in command 
of the British ; he had lost the sight of an eye 
in Corsica ; in many directions had he been 
active. He was now sailing to join the fleet 
under Admiral Sir John Jervis, doubtless to 
be met with somewhere in the waters off Cape 
St. Vincent. The Spanish line-of-battle ships 
brought the steady east wind along with them ; 
the " Minerve," on the other hand, was for 
some time bothered by the eddies and bafiling 



St. Vincent 



11 



flaws which you get near the Rock when the 
wind is east. But presently she took the 
breeze full and fair, and slanted along with 
fairly nimble French heels ; for French she 
was by birth, having been captured in the 
Mediterranean in 1795. 

When it was discovered that the Spaniards 
were after her, the frigate was cleared for action. 
Her situation was critical, even though Nelson 
was on board. Two huge line-of-battle ships 
opposed to a little frigate ! Colonel Drink- 
water said to Nelson as they walked .the deck 
together, that there seemed every probability 
of the enemy overhauling and engaging the 
" Minerve." " An engagement is quite pos- 
sible," answered Nelson. " The headmost ship 
appears to be a good sailer. But," he added, 
looking up at his broad pennant, " before the 
Dons get hold of that bit of bunting I will 
have a struggle with them, and sooner than 
give up the frigate, I '11 run her ashore." Here 
the Captain of the frigate (Cockburn) who had 
been viewing the chasing enemy through a 
spy-glass, stepped up and said that he believed 
the headmost ship was gaining upon them. 
This conjecture did not hinder the company 
from going below to dinner, which was just 
then announced. Before Nelson quitted the 



78 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

deck the order was given to set studding-sails. 
At table Colonel Drinkwater was seated next 
to Lieutenant Hardy (the " Kiss me, Hardy ! " 
of the " Victory's " cock-pit, always a favourite 
of Nelson) ; he had fallen into the hands of the 
Spaniard, and had recently been exchanged. 
The Colonel was offering him his congratula- 
tions when the dreadful cry of " Man over- 
board ! " echoed into the cabin through open 
skylight and companion-way. The ship's offi- 
cers rushed on deck. Drinkwater ran to the 
stern windows to see if the unfortunate man 
was in sight. Instead of the man, he saw one 
of the frigate's boats with a party of sailors, and 
Hardy at the helm. The current of the Strait 
set strongly eastward, and soon the boat was 
far astern of the " Minerve." Apparently the 
man had sunk on striking the water — he was 
never seen again. 

Hardy speedily signalled that the man was 
lost, and his crew put all their weight of British 
muscle into their oars to regain the frigate. 
What an extraordinary situation ! — a boat full 
of men struggling against the deadly set of the 
current, and beyond her the snow-white towers 
of the huge Spaniards sharpening upon the eye 
into distinctness as they drove the brine boiling 
from them with metalled forefoot ! Nelson, 



St. Vincent 



79 



casting one look at the boat and another at the 
enemy, cried out, " By God, I '11 not lose Hardy ! 
Back the mizzen-topsail." This was done, the 
frigate's way was arrested, and the brave hearts 
astern, with redoubled exertion, drove their 
clumsy boat through the snarl of sea. 

Now how would a novelist rescue the British 
frigate from this situation of extraordinary peril ? 
Would he dare invent the escape that really 
happened ? Perhaps it would not have hap- 
pened but for the terror excited by the name of 
Nelson, even then^ albeit the mighty tragedies of 
St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafal- 
gar were yet to be enacted. It was known by 
the Spaniards that Nelson was on board the 
" Minerve." The foremost of the pursuers on 
seeing the frigate bring her mizzen-topsail to the 
mast believed that she meant to fight. Let it 
be credited, to employ the expression of Drink- 
water, that the captain of a Spanish ship of the 
line did not consider himself an equal match 
for a British frigate with Nelson on board ! The 
Don shortened sail to allow her lubberly consort 
to join her. This stratagem of fear enabled 
the "Minerve" to drop down to her boat, and 
having picked up Hardy and his crew, she pro- 
ceeded on her voyage under a press. By sunset 
both the hulking Spaniards were out of sight. 



8o Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Amongst the passengers in the " Minerve " 
was Sir Gilbert Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, by 
whose side, in a cot in the frigate's after-cabin, 
slept Colonel Drinkwater. On the night follow- 
ing the alarms of the day the Colonel was awak- 
ened by the opening of the cabin door; a light 
was burning in the fore-cabin. He observed 
some person enter, and after peering, made out 
by the dim light that it was Nelson. 

" Is Sir Gilbert awake ? " Nelson asked. 

" No," answered the Colonel ; " has anything 
fresh happened ? " 

Nelson stepped to his cot, and said in a low 
voice, he had every reason to beheve that the 
" Minerve " was at that very moment in the 
midst of the Spanish Fleet. Their signals assured 
him it was not Sir John Jervis's. 

" The night is foggy," continued Nelson. 
" The * Minerve ' is now between two very large 
ships, within hail of each of them ; others are 
close aboard on all sides. Neither Cockburn 
nor I have the least doubt that the strangers are 
Spanish." 

" This is out of the frying-pan into the fire," 
said the Colonel, who was clearly now very wide 
awake, though the Viceroy continued to snore. 

" We have certainly got into something like 
a scrape," said Nelson. " It is quite unavoid- 



St. Vincent 8 1 

able on account of the night and the fog. With 
address we may extricate ourselves. If they are 
not the Spanish Grand Fleet, they may be a 
convoy or a detached squadron proceeding to 
the West Indies, and destined to strengthen the 
Spanish naval force in that quarter. If so, it is 
of the first moment that the British commander 
on the West Indian Station should be early 
apprised of these movements of the enemy. 
This duty I shall undertake instead of joining 
Sir John Jervis." 

The Colonel listened with consternation. The 
idea of being conveyed to the West Indies was 
horrible. He hoped to find a means of escape 
in the Viceroy. 

" What will you do with Sir Gilbert ElHot? " 
he asked. " It Is of the greatest importance 
that he should not only see Sir John Jervis, but 
reach England with the least possible delay." 

Nelson answered : " I '11 go on deck and see 
how things are there." 

Sir Gilbert still snored, and the Colonel was 

considerate enough not to waken him, though he 

was aroused afterwards by a second visit from 

Nelson. The " Minerve " was so manoeuvred as 

to seem to belong to the ships. As they wore 

or tacked so did she, contriving, nevertheless, 

to edge away Insensibly. Thus she managed to 

6 



8 2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

scrape dear of what actually proved to be the 
Spanish Grand Fleet. Nelson shaped a course 
which he believed would give him a sight of the 
ships of the night, and settle his doubts one way 
or the other. But, in spite of a bright lookout, 
nothing hove into view, until at daybreak on the 
13th of February, when, in the haze of the 
dawn, a brig and a cutter were sighted, and soon 
after a larger sail, which proved to be the British 
frigate " Lively," an outskirt of Sir John Jervis's 
fleet. 

The curtain now rises upon one of the most 
majestic sea-pieces on record. A battle was to 
be fought, and the British Admiral, Sir John 
Jervis, was overheard to say to himself, " A 
victory is very essential to England at this mo- 
ment." Public alarm in this country was great 
indeed. We feared that the Spaniards would 
effect a junction with the French and sweep the 
Channel from Land's End to the South Fore- 
land. Colonel Drinkwater declares that " noth- 
ing but England's disgrace and downfall was 
foretold and talked of throughout the kingdom." 
It was even coming to the closing of the Bank 
of England and the general suspension of cash 
payments. In these times of peace, which all 
must hope will long continue, — in spite of the 
old West Indian naval toast, " A bloody war and 



St. Vincent 83 

a sickly season " ^ — it is hard to realise the very- 
uneasy lives led by people who dwelt in the 
towns on our coast. Families visit Ramsgate 
or Brighton nowadays, and not the least idea of 
a line of French and Spanish ironclads bombard- 
ing their apartments disturbs the enjoyment with 
which they view the children sporting in the surf 
or digging in the sand. Very different was it a 
hundred years ago. The spy-glass of the long- 
shoreman ceaselessly swept the line of the hori- 
zon in search of the topmost cloths of the gigantic 
enemy who hoped to shake these kingdoms to 
their foundation. Indeed, down to 1805, ^^^^ 
scare of invasions, of huge floating armaments, 
was continual. Not a hundred years ago ! Has 
the demon of steam worked such a change that 
our longshore panics never can recur ? Let us 
hope it has. 

On falling in with the British Fleet, Nelson 
at once went on board the " Victory," Jervis's 
flag-ship, and on the same afternoon shifted his 
broad pennant to the " Captain." The Span- 
iards were not far off. Nelson was able to 
report this for certain, and before sunset on 
the evening of the day preceding the fight, the 
signal had been made for the British ships to 

^ Quoted by Lieutenant Parsons in his " Nelsonian Rem- 
iniscences." 



84 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

prepare for battle. Throughout the hours of 
darkness the vessels kept in close order. There 
is something wonderfully impressive in the 
picture of those fifteen towering giantesses 
whitening the dusk of the night with a light 
of glimmering canvas, moving slowly, stately, 
grimly onwards, a hush upon the decks, little 
to be heard but the sob of the sea at each 
thrust of cut-water. The human expectation 
in them, the hopes but not the fears, gave 
them a sentience of their own ; they moved 
like lofty goddesses, instinct with the spirit 
of the high and splendid hearts that crowded 
them. 

The preparation for battle was not then as 
it now is. Cutlasses were ground, pikes sharp- 
ened, pistols flinted : these were for the boarders. 
They filled powder and fitted well-oiled gun 
locks to the great cannon, and slung their lower 
yards with chains. One who was present in 
that memorable battle says that the Signal- 
Lieutenant called from the main yard of the 
" Barfleur," peering into the haze, " I have a 
glimpse through the fog of their leeward line, 
and they loom like Beachy Head. By my soul, 
they are thumpers ! for I distinctly make out 
four tiers of ports in one of them, bearing an 
Admiral's flag." " Don Cordova in the * San- 



St. Vincent 85 

tissima Trinidad," ' says Vice-Admiral Walde- 
grave, " and I trust in Providence that we shall 
reduce this mountain into a molehill before 
sunset." 

Whilst this was passing aboard the " Bar- 
fleur," the gallant Jervis was walking the quar- 
ter-deck of the " Victory," " Make the signal 
to prepare for battle," said he. How all that 
is noble, heroic, gallant, dashing, in the long and 
glorious sea-story of our country leaps to our 
appreciation with the mere utterance of the 
name of Jervis ! As he walked, the hostile 
numbers were reported to him as they appeared 
by signal. " There are eight sail of the line. 
Sir John." "Very well, sir." "There are 
twenty-five sail of the line." "Very well, sir." 
" There are twenty-seven sail. Sir John," and 
this was accompanied, says my authority, a 
Quarterly Reviewer, by some remark on the 
great disparity of the forces, Jervis's fleet con- 
sisting of fifteen sail of the line only. " Enough, 
sir! No more of that!" exclaimed Jervis. "The 
die is cast ; and if there were fifty sail I would 
go through them." 

The Spanish foe was a splendid but a formid- 
able sight. He floated in mountains grinning 
with artillery. The " Santissima Trinidad " sat 
like a cathedral in her enormous bulk of timber, 



86 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

pierced by the teeth of a hundred and thirty-six 
guns. She was believed to be the largest ship 
in the world. Unfortunately, in our day some- 
body has discovered that she was not a four- 
decker, and so another harmless tradition nods 
to its fall to the blast of old Dryasdust's blunder- 
buss. James describes the vessel as having been 
built at Havana in the year 1769, as a one hun- 
dred and twelve gun-ship, similar to the " San 
Josef" or " Salvador del Mundo " except prob- 
ably in possessing rather more breadth of beam. 
It appears that some time between the com- 
mencement of 1793 and the end of 1796, her 
quarter-deck and forecastle were formed into a 
whole deck, barricades built up along her gang- 
ways, and ports cut through them, so as to make 
the total number of eight-pounders on that deck 
equal in amount to the twelves on the deck next 
below it. This accounts for one hundred and 
twenty guns : the remaining four, we may sup- 
pose, were mounted on the poop. The " Santis- 
sima Trinidad " was therefore a flush four-decker, 
that exceeded the three-deck one hundred and 
twelves in force only by fourteen eight-pound- 
ers and four pieces of a still smaller calibre. It 
was immediately noticeable that the Spaniards, 
however formidable they looked, were making 
a very ill figure in a tactical sense. Parsons, 



St. Vincent 87 

who, as an eye-witness, I am willing to quote, 
says: "They made the most awkward attempt 
to form their line of battle. And they looked 
a complete forest huddled together." Jervis 
formed his fleet in line-of-battle, and headed so 
as to cut off some of the Spanish ships to lee- 
ward. Several Spanish line-of-battle ships and 
frigates, separated from their main body, stood 
away on the starboard tack, aimlessly firing as 
they went. The leading British ship was the 
" Culloden," commanded by Troubridge, one 
of the finest and bravest of the sea officers of 
that day of marine giants. As she floated into 
the wake of the Spaniards the signal was made 
to tack in succession, and the " Culloden " in- 
stantly put her helm hard down. There are 
plenty who have passed their opijiions freely on 
the subject of this signal. There can be no 
doubt, however, that the signal to tack in suc- 
cession was an error of judgment. Such a 
strategy would oblige every British ship to 
arrive at the point where the ship immediately 
ahead of her had tacked before shifting her helm 
for the signalled manoeuvre, and this would give 
the Spaniards plenty of time to go clear of their 
foe and either put themselves into a proper 
posture of battle or sail right away for home. 
It was Nelson who, observing the blunder flying 



8 8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

at the " Victory's " mast-head, determined not 
to heed it, and, with the instincts of a consum- 
mate seaman and the perception of a born 
tactician, he put his helm up and headed for 
the " Santissima Trinidad." The mighty Span- 
iard was compelled to put his helm down. 
This gave time to Troubridge and other head- 
most ships to arrive. Nelson's bold and deci- 
sive manoeuvre was a breach of discipline, a 
defiance of Jervis. It is an illustration, how- 
ever, of his amazing spirit and impetuosity of 
character. He saw what was the right thing 
to do, and did it without giving an instant's 
thought as to what the consequences might 
prove to him, — not, indeed, if his one ship 
should be defeated and silenced by her gigantic 
opponents, but if Sir John Jervis, the tautest 
of disciplinarians, should deal with him after- 
wards. He might, perhaps, have guessed he 
had nothing to fear on this score. Jervis 
loved him. After the battle. Captain Calder 
said something to Jervis in depreciation of 
Nelson. Jervis, as we shall presently see, 
would not listen to him. 

Let us now attend to the proceedings of 
Nelson. Having wore ship, as we have seen, 
he passed between the " Diadem " and the 
" Excellent," and was speedily engaged with 



St. Vincent 89 

the leewardmost of the Spanish division. He 
was in the thick of the "Santissima Trinidad," 
the " San Josef" and " Salvador del Mundo," 
both of one hundred and twelve guns, the " San 
Nicolas," and two other first-rates. Sir Gilbert 
Elliot and Colonel Drinkwater, watching, on 
board the frigate " Lively," this marvellous 
sight of one comparatively small British ship 
engaged with a cluster of towering Spaniards, 
naturally expected to see Nelson annihilated. 
Indeed, they thought his conduct extraordinary 
and unaccountable. He was presently sup- 
ported by the " Culloden," Captain Troubridge, 
but for some time these two vessels were fight- 
ing the most unequal battle on record. The 
iron hurricanes of the Spaniards had almost 
wrecked the " Captain " aloft. At last arrived 
the " Blenheim," which passing to windward 
of them, and ahead, to use Nelson's phrase, 
"eased us a little." The " Salvador del Mundo " 
and " San Isidro " had dropped astern, and were 
compelled by Collingwood's passing broadsides 
to hoist English colours. Collingwood was in 
command of the " Excellent." He and Nelson 
were old and aflfectionate friends. They had 
served together in the West Indies, and by a 
strange chance, which had something of destiny 
in it, when we think that these two men came 



90 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

together at Trafalgar again, the ships which 
Nelson had commanded in the West Indies 
had proved so many links in the promotion of 
the career of Collingwood. 

The " Excellent," having delivered her smash- 
ing broadsides, held on for the support of Nel- 
son, whose situation was certainly verv critical. 
To use the language of Nelson, Collingwood 
disdained the parade of taking possession of 
beaten enemies, and " most gallantly pushed 
up to save his old friend and messmate." The 
" Captain's " plight was little less than that of 
the sheer hulk's. She had lost her fore-topmast. 
Every sail had been shot away. Every shroud 
and rope was an end. And the wheel was 
gone. She could prove of no further service 
in the line or in chase. The " Excellent " 
ranged up with every sail set, and passing 
within ten feet of the " San Nicolas," the ship 
that Nelson was fighting, poured into her one 
of Collingwood's most awful and tremendous 
drenches. The wretched Spaniard luffed, and 
the " San Josef" fell on board her. That cool, 
austere, and wonderful seaman, Collingwood, 
then passed on for the " Santissima Trinidad " 
at the time when Nelson ordered his helm to 
be shifted, and called for the boarders. 

There were some soldiers of the 69th on 



St. Vincent oi 

board, and headed by their lieutenant (Pierson) 
they were the first to make the attempt to 
board the huge "San Nicolas" of eighty-four 
guns. Boarding was always the toughest of 
the many tough and grim duties of the seamen 
of those days. A very small swell of sea would 
suffice to keep the two flaming antagonists reel- 
ing and parting, reeling and parting in regular 
pendulum tick. By the boarding-pike was the 
prowess of our country established, and her 
greatness maintained, not in the capture of line- 
of-battle ships, but in marvellous cutting-out 
expeditions and in single-ship actions. The 
ironclad has removed a deadly weapon from 
the hands of the Jacks ; but let not the enemy 
exult, for if the pike has foundered the heart is 
still afloat, and the heart must always be first. 
The earliest to gain the " San Nicolas's " 
mizzen-channel was Berry, the First Lieutenant 
of the " Captain." A soldier broke open the 
upper quarter gallery window, leapt, and was 
followed by Nelson and others. The cabin 
doors were fastened, and the Spanish officers 
fired down through the skylights with pistols. 
But one broken door sufficed to liberate the 
boarders, the soldiers fired a volley, and the 
Spanish Commodore fell. Nelson rushed on 
to the quarter-deck, and found Berry in posses- 



9 2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

sion of the poop, and the Spanish ensign haul- 
ing down. The ship was in their possession. 
But another trouble was alongside, for just then 
the "San Josef" began to fire muskets and 
pistols from the Admiral's stern gallery. Noth- 
ing was to be done but board her, and so seize 
and silence her. Little risk attended this. 
Scarcely had Nelson entered her main chains 
when a Spanish officer, looking over the quar- 
ter-deck rail, exclaimed that the ship had 
surrendered. 

Possibly this was the most thrilling moment 
in Nelson's life. Two line-of-battle ships cap- 
tured by boarding ! Even after the battle is 
over and Nelson sits down and muses, he seems 
unable to realise it all. " The more I think of 
our late action," he wrote to his wife, " the 
more I am astonished; it absolutely appears a 
dream." And he writes to Sir Gilbert Elliot : 
" To receive the swords of the vanquished on 
the quarter-deck of a Spanish first-rate can 
seldom fall to the good fortune of any man." 
Memorable and wonderful is that picture of 
the wrecked British man-of-war lying alongside 
her two huge prizes, with Nelson on the quarter- 
deck of one of them, receiving from the Spanish 
Captain, who bends his knee, the honourable 
sword of a man who had done his best and 




2 y. 



St. Vincent 90 

could do no more. He said that the Spanish 
Admiral was dying of his wounds below. Nel- 
son gave him his hand, and requested him to 
inform his officers and the ship's company that 
the vessel had surrendered. This he did. 
" And," says Nelson, " on the quarter-deck of 
a Spanish first-rate, extravagant as the story 
may seem, did I receive the swords of the van- 
quished Spaniards, which, as I received, I gave 
to William Fearney, one of my bargemen." 

The flag-ship, the " Victory," in sailing past 
the amazing marine triplet, thrice cheered with 
lungs of storm, and when Nelson afterwards 
went on board this ship to see the Admiral, 
Jervis received him on the quarter-deck, em- 
braced him, and thanked him again and again 
in fifty kind expressions for his magnificent 
services. The Battle of St. Vincent was really 
won by Nelson. There is no doubt but for 
his prompt and extraordinary measure the 
meeting of the fleets would have ended in little 
more than a futile distant cannonading. The 
Spaniard would probably have withdrawn to his 
port, and awaited another opportunity for put- 
ting himself into a more powerful posture of 
defence by junction with the Frenchmen at 
Toulon. How high and generous is the heart 
of the seaman ! All will admit that Colling- 



94 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

wood bore a large part in Nelson's achievement 
on this glorious Valentine's Day. Yet with 
what modesty does he refer to his share ! " My 
dear good friend," he writes, on the day fDllow- 
ing the battle, " first let me congratulate you on 
the success of yesterday, on the brilliancy it 
attached to the British Navy, and the humility 
it must cause to its enemies ; and then let me 
congratulate my dear Commodore on the dis- 
tinguished part which he ever takes when the 
honour and interests of his country are at stake. 
It added very much tc the satisfaction which I 
felt in thumping the Spaniards that I released 
you a little. The highest rewards are due to 
you and * Culloden.' You formed the plan 
of attack, we were only accessories to the Dons' 
ruin, for had they got on the other tack they 
would have been sooner joined, and the busi- 
ness would have been less complete ; " and he 
signs himself, " I am ever, my dear friend, 
affectionately yours, C. Collingwood." 

Small wonder that the great novelist, Thacke- 
ray, should have found something to almost rev- 
erentially admire in this simple-hearted, modest, 
noble-minded sea-warrior ! How tender was 
the regard of those sailors for one another ! 
How unaffected their enthusiastic admiration for 
the heroic qualities, and how superb is the diffi- 



St. Vincent g^ 

dence everywhere manifested ! They fight as 
only Enghshmen do fight at sea, and then, with 
the sweat and reek of the battle still upon them, 
they sit down and write affectionate congratula- 
tory letters one to another, and they write home 
cheerfully to their wives, and send their blessings 
to their children, and every syllable that falls 
from their lips or their pen glows and lives with 
manly loyalty and devotion to the throne and 
the country they love. 

Nelson's own account of the battle in a letter 
to his brother, to whom he naturally opens his 
heart more freely than to strangers, is worth 
reading : — 

" Many thanks for your kind letter of March 
13 th, and I beg you will thank all our friends 
for their kind congratulations ; and I must be 
delighted when, from the King to the Peasant, 
all are willing to do me honour. But I will 
partake of nothing but what shall include Col- 
lingwood and Troubridge. We are the only 
three Ships who made great exertions on that 
glorious day : the others did their duty, and 
some not exactly to my satisfaction. We ought 
to have had the * Santissima Trinidad ' and the 
' Soberano,' seventy-four. They belonged to 
us by conquest, and only wanted some good fel- 
low to get alongside them, and they were ours. 



96 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

But it is well ; and for that reason only we do 
not like to say much. 

" Sir John Jervis is not quite contented, but 
says nothing publicly. An anecdote in the 
Action is honourable to the Admiral, and to 
Troubridge and myself. Calder said, * Sir, the 
"Captain" and "Culloden" are separated from 
the Fleet and unsupported; shall we recall them? ' 
* I will not have them recalled. I put my faith 
in those ships ; it 's a disgrace that they are not 
supported and separated.' " [I break into Nel- 
son's narrative with this anecdote from Tucker's 
" Life of St. Vincent." He says that in the 
evening, while talking over the events of the 
day. Captain Calder hinted that the spontaneous 
manoeuvre which carried those duo fulmina belli 
Nelson and Collingwood into the brunt of bat- 
tle, was an unauthorised departure by the Com- 
modore from the prescribed mode of attack. 
" It certainly was so," replied Sir John Jervis, 
" and if ever you commit such a breach of your 
orders, I will forgive you also."] " You will 
not be surprised to hear I have declined all 
hereditary Honours ; and as to entailing a Title, 
unless you have a good estate to send with it, 
you send misery ; and till I became a Flag-offi- 
cer, I had not made both ends meet. Chains 
and Medals are what no fortune and connexion 



St. Vincent 97 

in England can obtain ; and I shall feel prouder 
of those than all the Titles in the King's power 
to bestow." 

I limit myself in this reference to the battle 
of St. Vincent to Nelson's share in it. It 
would carry me beyond the purpose of these 
contributions to describe the battle at large, — 
nor, indeed, does the relation of a conflict at 
sea make very entertaining reading. Nothing 
is more insipid than to hear that at fourteen sec- 
onds past nine, H. M. S. " Noah's Ark " hauled 
up her courses and fired her larboard bow gun 
at the enemy. We need a large general canvas, 
a gorgeous Turneresque confusion, volumes of 
white powder-smoke scarlet with the lancing 
flash, the crash of the falling spar, the yells of 
the wounded, the cheers of the victors. One 
must always regret, however, that the " Santis- 
sima Trinidad " made good her escape. We 
hear, indeed, of her again at Trafalgar, where, 
of course, she is properly accounted for. But 
so noble a heap of frowning timber would, of 
them all, have most gallantly graced that British 
conquest. Nelson's rewards consisted of the 
freedom of the city of London in a gold casket, 
and a sword of honour. The freedom of the 
city of Norwich was also conferred. The King 
made him a Knight of the Bath. He was pro- 

7 



98 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

moted rear-admiral, though it seems that this 
recognition was not owing to his claims as a 
conquering hero. 

After the battle Nelson went on board the 
frigate " Lively," where he found Colonel 
Drinkwater, who reported some interesting 
conversation with him. 

" Where is Sir Gilbert ? " was his first inquiry. 

" Gone with Lord Garlics to the * Victory,' " 
was the Colonel's reply. 

" I hoped," he rejoined, " to have caught him 
before he saw the Admiral ; but come below 
with me," and he led the way to the cabin. 

" How came you. Commodore, to get into 
that singular and perilous situation ? " 

" I '11 tell you how it happened. The Ad- 
miral's intention, I saw, was to cut off the de- 
tached squadron of eight sail, and afterwards 
attack the main body, weakened by this separa- 
tion. Observing, however, as our squadron 
advanced, and became engaged with the enemy's 
ships, that the main body of the enemy were 
pushing to join their friends to leeward, by 
passing in the rear of our squadron, I thought, 
unless by some prompt and extraordinary meas- 
ure the main body could be diverted from this 
course, until Sir John (at that time in action in 
the * Victory *) could see their plan, his well 



St. Vincent 99 

arranged designs on the enemy would be frus- 
trated. I therefore ordered the ' Captain ' to 
wear, and passing the rear of our squadron, 
directed Captain Miller to steer for the centre 
of the enemy's fleet, where was their Admiral- 
in-Chief seconded by two or three deckers, 
hoping by this proceeding to confound them, 
and, if possible, make them change their course 
(as he did), and thus afford Sir John Jervis time 
to see their movements, and take measures to 
follow up his original intention, 

" I saw," he continued (and then he spoke 
with increased animation), " that from the dis- 
abled state of the ' Captain ' [his ship] and the 
effective attack of the approaching British ships, 
I was Hkely to have my beaten opponent taken 
from me : I therefore decided to board the * St. 
Nicholas,' which I had chiefly fought, and con- 
sidered to be my prize. Orders were given to 
lay the ' Captain ' aboard of her ; the spritsail- 
yard passed into her mizzen rigging. Lieutenant 
Berry with the ship's boarders, and Captain 
Pearson with the sixty-ninth regiment (acting as 
marines on board the ' Captain '), soon got pos- 
session of the enemy's ship. Assisted by one 
of the sailors, I got from the fore-chains into 
the quarter-gallery through the window, and 
thence through the cabin to the quarter-deck. 



loo Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

where I found my gallant friends already 
triumphant." 

"The Admiral," observed the Colonel, " of 
course will be made a peer, and his seconds in 
command noticed accordingly. As for you. 
Commodore," continued the Colonel, " they will 
make you a baronet." 

The word was scarcely uttered, when, placing 
his hand on the Colonel's arm, and looking him 
most expressively in the face, he said, — 

" No, no ; if they want to mark my services 
it must not be in that manner — " 

" Oh ! you wish to be made a Knight of the 
Bath," for Drinkwater could not imagine that 
his ambition at that time led him to expect a 
peerage. His suppositions proved to be cor- 
rect, for he instantly answered, — 

" Yes, if my services have been of any value, 
let them be noticed in a way that the public 
may know me — or them." 

It is explained by this that he regarded a 
baronetcy as too costly, and that he wished to 
bear about his person some honorary distinction 
to attract the public eye and mark his profes- 
sional services. 

"Joy sparkles in every eye, and desponding 
Britain draws back her sable veil and smiles," 
wrote turgid old Edmund Nelson to his son. 



St. Vincent loi 

Lady Nelson's letter was more to the point : 
" Yesterday I received your Letter of February 
1 6th. Thank God you are well, and Josiah. 
My anxiety was far beyond my powers of ex- 
pression. M. Nelson and Captain Locker be- 
haved humanely and attentively to me. They 
wrote immediately, Captain Locker assuring me 
you were perfectly well, Maurice begging me 
not to believe idle reports, the ' Gazette ' say- 
ing you were slightly wounded. Altogether, 
my dearest husband, my sufferings were great. 
Lady Saumarez [whose husband. Captain Sir 
James Saumarez, commanded the ' Orion ' in 
the Battle] came running to tell me she had 
letters from her husband — all this was on this 
day week. He speaks generously and manly 
about you, and concluded by saying ^ Commo- 
dore Nelson's conduct is above praise.' You 
were universally the subject of conversation. . . . 
I shall not be myself till I hear from you again. 
What can I attempt to say to you about Board- 
ing ? You have been most wonderfully pro- 
tected ; you have done desperate actions enough. 
Now may I — indeed I do — beg that you 
never Board again. Leave it for Captains. How 
rejoiced Jo. [meaning her son, Josiah Nisbet] 
must have been to have seen you, although it 
was but an absence of two months. To-morrow 



I02 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

is our wedding day, when it gave me a dear 
husband, my child the best of fathers. I hope 
he will deserve all the blessings Providence has 
bestowed on him. . . . Do come home this 
summer, or in the autumn. It is said a change 
in Administration would certainly have taken 
place had not this wonderful and fortunate Vic- 
tory taken place. Admiral Parker, it seems, 
had written the ' Captain ' and ' Culloden ' bore 
the brunt of the Action. This instant have 
I received a letter from Lord Hood, telling me 
Sir Robert Calder was gone to Portsmouth. 
Thank you, my dearest husband, a thousand 
times for your letter of February 22nd. God 
bless and protect you, and my Joe ! — crown all 
your endeavours with success, and grant us a 
happy meeting. I can bear all my extreme 
good fortune. Your affectionate Wife, Frances 
H. Nelson." 



CHAPTER V 



TENERIFFE 



AFTER the battle of St. Vincent, Nelson, 
whose broad pennant was flying aboard the 
" Irresistible," went upon one of the most ro- 
mantic of all the cruises a man could be de- 
spatched on. He, with a small squadron; was to 
look out for and fall in with, if possible, three 
Spanish ships of the line with an immense trea- 
sure on board. Also on board of one of them 
was the Viceroy of Mexico. The name of the 
treasure-ship, the plate-ship, the ship deep with 
minted money and ecclesiastical furniture in 
precious metal, fills the imagination with the 
colossal figure of the galleon. She was the dream 
of the buccaneer, the darling of Drake's heart; 
for her Anson defied the horrors of the Horn. 
It did not signify that the ships which Nelson 
was searching for were line-of-battle ships much 
after the pattern of the "Victory" and the 
" Culloden " ; they had treasure aboard, and 
all the romance of the old galleon, with her cas- 
tellated stern and her very flowing sheets. 



1 04 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

comes into them with that. One may say with 
Wordsworth, — 

"It is not now as it hath been of yore." 

If a lading of treasure freighted the full- 
breasted hull of the galleon with the amplest 
and most gorgeous spirit of romance, how should 
it be with us in these days when, if you glance 
at the money article in your newspaper, you will 
see that one, two, say three steamers, great mail- 
liners, are in one day expected home with such 
wealth of minted gold aboard as makes the rich- 
est of the old galleons cut but a very sorry 
figure ? And whereas those old galleons were 
shoving, gold and silver laden, through the 
broad ocean once in a blue moon for old Spain, 
in our time every day finds its twenty galleons 
on the sea, some rushing east, some darting south 
and west ; fabrics which in the night pass through 
the shadow in bodies of light, which in the day 
are such goodly sights for their leaning chimneys, 
their frothing race, the flash of glass, the rainbow 
at the stem, the twinkle of uniforms, the gay 
raiment of women, that no Englishman clearly 
understanding that they are all born (and their 
souls in the shape of engines given to them) in 
this fair country but will own to a thrill of pride 
as he watches them. 



Teneriffe 



105 



Nelson met neither with the Viceroy nor with 
the treasure. While he cruised his gallant ship 
the " Captain" was refitting, and when he made an 
end of his search he once more shifted his pen- 
nant to his old valorous craft. It is noticeable 
throughout this time that he was writing in lan- 
guage of the deepest affection to his wife — 
noticeable, I say, because, unhappily, the Syren 
is waiting for him round the corner, and their 
second meeting, preordained by that Providence 
which shapes our ends, was not to be very long 
delayed. 

He was haunted by a dream of a cottage — 
it is the sailor's dream — a cottage not neces- 
sarily by the sea ; nay, planted rather in a fertile 
and plenteous country, which burnishes the 
autumn with its harvest, and fills the year's early 
months with the delicious concerts of the woods. 
Those who hold Nelson to have been ambitious 
will find no such quality in this passage of his 
life. His expectations, even though St. Vincent 
had been fought and he was the hero of whom 
everybody was talking at home, rose no higher 
than a little cottage. This, for instance, is how 
he writes to his wife in June 1797 : " Rest 
assured of my most perfect love, affection, and 
esteem for your person and character, which the 
more I see of the world the more I must 



I o6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

admire. The imperious call of honour to serve 
my country is the only thing which keeps me a 
moment from you, and a hope that by staying a 
little longer it may enable you to enjoy those 
little luxuries which you so highly merit. I 
pray God it may soon be peace, and that we may 
get into the cottage." 

Does a man write like this to a cold, unsym- 
pathetic wife ? Even in the Teneriffe business, 
which we are shortly to catch a glimpse of, his 
last thought before going ashore was for his wife. 
He called young Nisbet, his step-son, into his 
cabin to help him to arrange and burn his 
mother's letters. On perceiving that Josiah 
was armed, he begged him to remain behind, 
saying, " Should we both fall, what will become 
of your poor mother? And the care of the 
* Theseus ' falls to you ; stay, therefore, and 
take charge of her." Nisbet answered spunkily : 
" The ship must take care of herself. I '11 go 
with you to-night, if I never go again." That 's 
how it was, then, with Nelson in his relations 
with his wife, and it is a thing good to remember 
and pleasant to repeat. 

- News reached Jervis one day that a rich Span- 
ish ship, bound from Manila to Spain, was lying 
at Santa Cruz. Jervis, now Earl of St. Vincent, 
conferred with Nelson as to an attack on Tene- 




NULSON'S CONFLICT WITH A SPANISH LAUNCH AT THE BLOCKADE 
OF CADIZ, JUI.V 3. 1797. 



From the Painting by R. U'estatl. R. A. 



TenerifFe 



107 



rifFe and the seizure of the treasure-ship. Three 
ships of the line and three frigates were sent on 
this service. Nelson, whose jfiag was on board 
the " Theseus," foresaw many difficulties. He 
had previously suggested to Jervis an attack on 
TenerifFe, but then he had relied on the assis- 
tance of troops. This is truly a melancholy 
passage in the life of Lord Nelson. Who that 
has ever beheld that mighty ocean " pike " of 
TenerifFe, and watched the rollers foaming round 
the granite rock, but must realise the prodigious 
risk which Nelson and his men were about to 
encounter, not only in the dominating forts and 
an alarmed and furious population, but in- the 
giant forces of Nature herself, — rugged declivi- 
ties, the spite of ofF-shore squalls, and the savage 
trouble of hollow seas ? Nelson himself wrote 
the story : he chose a Friday on which to em- 
bark one thousand men, including two hundred 
and fifty marines, the whole commanded by 
Captain Troubridge. Friday never yet was a 
good day for the seaman, and it never will be. 
Wind and tide belated the frigates ; the dark 
night which was to have witnessed the attack 
paled into dawn and discovered the British to 
the Spaniards. " Thus foiled in my original 
plan," says Nelson, " I considered it for the 
honour of our King and country not to give 



io8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

over the attempt to possess ourselves of the 
town, that our enemies might be convinced 
there is nothing which Englishmen are not 
equal to." 

At eleven o'clock on the night of July 24, 
boats containing between six and seven hundred 
men, and a cutter called the " Fox," full of 
sailors, plied oars through the dusk towards the 
town. The sea was working ; the wind blew 
with weight and an edge. Nelson was in one 
of the boats, and all were hoping that a landing 
might be effected before the Spaniards saw them 
coming. Suddenly the night was flashed up 
with the fire of thirty or forty pieces of cannon 
and musketry. The whole sea-front of the town 
had opened upon the British, but nothing could 
arrest those resolute oarsmen and captains. A 
shot plunged into the "Fox" cutter and sank 
her out of hand ; a great shriek went up, but 
still, through the darkness and through the 
broken waters, those boats filled with British 
hearts moved slowly onwards. But a dreadful 
misfortune was now to happen ; a large propor- 
tion of the boats failed to see the Mole, and 
went on shore through what Nelson described as 
" a raging surf." Every boat was stove : those 
who came off with their lives stormed the Mole, 
though opposed by five hundred men, captured 



TenerifFe 109 

it and spiked the guns. But nothing was to be 
done in the face of the heavy fire of musketry 
and grape-shot poured into the British from the 
citadel and houses at the head of the Mole. 
"We could not advance," says Nelson, "and 
we were nearly all killed or wounded." 

Shortly after leaving his boat. Nelson's right 
arm was almost shot off. He cried out, " I am 
shot through the arm ! I am a dead man ! " 
His step-son. Lieutenant Nisbet, was with him ; 
he tenderly got him into the boat, and laid him 
in the bottom of her. Nelson was bleeding pro- 
fusely, and as the sight of the blood seemed to 
increase his faintness, Nisbet took off his^ hat 
and concealed the wounded shoulder. Next he 
examined the wound, which was only to be done 
in the flash of the artillery, and so holding the 
almost sundered limb as to in some measure 
hinder the bleeding, he bound up the wound 
with a silk handkerchief which he took from his 
neck. These particuliars are given by Clarke. 
The young fellow's presence of mind, Nelson 
afterwards declared, saved his life. It was, in- 
deed, an act of real heroism, for the guns were 
thundering and the shot were flying, and the 
wounded were shrieking, and, above all, there 
was the unnerving spectacle of Nelson, bleeding 
to death in the bottom of the boat. 



1 1 o Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

The nearest ship was the " Seahorse." The 
wife of the commander of that ship was on board 
of her. When Nelson was told that the vessel 
they were making for was the " Seahorse," he 
ordered them in a faint voice to go to another 
ship. Nisbet answered that delay might cost 
him his life. *' Then I will die ! " exclaimed the 
noble-hearted man, " for I would rather suffer 
death than alarm Mrs. Fremantle by seeing me 
in this state and when I can give her no tidings 
whatever of her husband." The thought of 
others was always first with Nelson. One must 
closely study his correspondence and carefully 
follow his career to understand how full of com- 
passion, benevolence, charity, this great man was. 
The picture off Teneriffe is deeply impressive. 
One sees the Atlantic surge shaping out of dark- 
ness and flashing into the ghastly light of foam ; 
one sees the British ships pallid, elusive as 
phantoms, heavily plunging amidst the hollows 
of those darkling waters ; but above all one sees 
that small boat, swept by the spray as she starts 
to each pulse of oar, with Nelson, the darling of 
our country, lying bleeding under her thwarts, 
speechlessly suffering agony, and, what was 
worse than his physical pain, irremediably 
maimed, so that nevermore should he know 
the use of a right arm. 



TenerifFe 



1 1 1 



They rowed him to his own ship, the " The- 
seus," one of whose midshipmen was Mr. Hoste, 
afterwards Sir WiUiam Hoste, among the most 
gallant of Collingwood's captains. The hour 
was two o'clock in the morning, and young 
Hoste stood at the gangway looking down. 
He heard Nelson say : " Let me alone ; I have 
yet my legs left and one arm. Tell the surgeon 
to make haste and get his instruments. I know 
I must lose my right arm, so the sooner it is off 
the better." The young midshipman then saw 
him grasp a rope, and drag himself up the ship's 
side. Dwell a little upon this prodigious act of 
fortitude in a man whose right arm, bleeding 
always, hung by a shred or two, whilst the boat 
leapt in the hollow sea and the rolling ship 
leaned to and from her. The moment he gained 
the deck he told the surgeon to remove the 
limb, "and," says Hoste, "he underwent the 
amputation with the same firmness and courage 
that have always marked his character." The 
limb. Miss Knight afterwards discovered, was 
placed in the hammock of a dead seaman, and 
consigned to the deep with the body. 

It is wonderful also to recall that, despite the 
weakness arising from the flow of blood, the 
torture of the wound and the grief attending his 
loss, he was writing to Sir John Jervis with his 



1 1 2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

left hand on July 27, the operation having 
taken place in the early morning of July 25. 

The attack was no inglorious defeat, but it 
was a bad and bloody failure. Captain Bowen 
and a number of lieutenants lost their lives. 
Twenty-eight seamen and sixteen marines were 
killed, a hundred and five seamen and marines 
were wounded, and a crowd of seamen and 
marines were drowned. Captain Troubridge, 
who was ashore, collected all the people he 
could find, and by daybreak his force consisted 
of eighty marines, eighty pikemen, and one 
hundred and eighty small-arms men. He found 
the whole of the streets commanded by field- 
pieces, and swarms of Spaniards and French 
under arms approaching by every avenue. The 
boats were stove, and no more men could be 
got. The ammunition was wet, and there were 
no provisions. Troubridge sent Captain Hood 
with a flag of truce to the Governor to say that 
he would burn the town if the Spanish force 
approached one inch further. This miserable 
fiasco ended in a manner not less honourable to 
the Spaniard than to the British. The Governor 
refreshed the poor fellows with wine and bread, 
and they returned to their ships, marching 
" through the town on our return with the 
British colours flying at our head." 



TenerifFe 1 1 3 

It is pleasant to find Nelson writing to his 
wife thus on Aug. 3 : " My dearest Fanny, — I 
am so confident of your aflPection that I feel the 
pleasure you will receive will be equal, whether 
my letter is wrote by my right hand or left. It 
was the chance of war, and I had great reason to 
be thankful ; and I know that it will add much to 
your pleasure in finding that Josiah, under God's 
providence, was principally instrumental in sav- 
ing my life. As to my health, it never was 
better ; and now I hope soon to return to you ; 
and my country, I trust, will not allow me any 
longer to Unger in want of that pecuniary assis- 
tance which I have been fighting the whole war 
to preserve to her. But I shall not be sur- 
prised to be neglected and forgot, as probably 
I shall no longer be considered as useful. 
However, I shall feel rich if I continue to 
enjoy your affection. The cottage is now more 
necessary than ever." 

Filled with despair by the loss of his arm 
he wrote thus to the Eari of St. Vincent from 
the " Theseus " : "I am become a burthen to 
my friends, and useless to my country; but 
by my letter wrote the 24th, you will per- 
ceive my anxiety for the promotion of my 
son-in-law Josiah Nisbet. When I leave your 
command, I become dead to the Worid ; I go 



1 1 4 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

hence and am no more seen. If from poor 
Bowen's loss you think it proper to oblige me, 
I rest confident you will do it ; the Boy is under 
obligations to me, but he repaid me by bringing 
me from the Mole of Santa Cruz." And this 
is how the gallant Jervis helped to keep lifted 
that noble spirit : " Mortals cannot command 
success ; you and your companions have cer- 
tainly deserved it, by the greatest degree of 
heroism and perseverance that ever was exhib- 
ited. I grieve for the loss of your arm, and for 
the fate of poor Bowen and Gibson, with the 
other brave men who fell so gallantly. I hope 
you and Captain Fremantle are doing well ; 
the * Seahorse ' shall waft you to England the 
moment her wants are supplied. Your son-in- 
law is Captain of the ^Dolphin' Hospital ship, 
and all other wishes you may favour me with 
shall be fulfilled, as far as is consistent with 
what I owe to some valuable officers in the 
* Ville de Paris.' We expect to hear of the Pre- 
liminaries of Peace being agreed on every hour. 
I have betted jCioo that they were settled on or 
before the I2th and that the Definitive Treaty 
is signed before that day month. Give my love 
to Mrs. Fremantle. I will salute her and bow 
to your stump to-morrow morning, if you will 
give me leave." 



TenerifFe 



115 



He went home in the " Seahorse," whose 
commander, Fremantle, had been wounded at 
TenerifFe. Never possibly had he passed 
hours more dispiriting with visitation of anx- 
ious thought than these of this passage to 
England. He had lost his arm, he had lost 
an eye, he had been hurt in the back ; in other 
ways had he been injured while fighting the 
battles of his country ; he was now what he 
himself called a left-handed Admiral, and be- 
lieved that his country would no longer need 
his services, and would make haste to forget 
him. Added to the mental dejection induced 
by these reflections was the pain in the stump 
of his arm. It tortured him day and night. 
Ship's surgery was but rough work in those 
days. There was no ether, no chloroform ; and 
laudanum made one speechless and sick, and 
so, perhaps, increased the sufferings by forbid- 
ding one the relief of a howl or a groan. 
The ligature had been applied to one of the 
arteries after amputation, and produced agonising 
spasms. But what Nelson most complained 
of was the coldness of the knife In making 
the first circular cut through the integument 
and muscles. Always afterwards, whenever 
there was any prospect of his ship going into 
action, he gave orders that a hanging stove 



1 1 6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

should be kept in the galley that hot water 
might be ready for heating the knife. It is 
told of him that when he was off Toulon 
expecting an engagement with the French, he 
called to the ship's surgeon and said with great 
significance, " Doctor, don't forget the warm 
water ! " The doctor answered that a hanging 
stove was in readiness, and Nelson smiled, and 
gave him an approving nod. 

The "Seahorse " reached Spithead on Septem- 
ber I, and Nelson joined his wife at Bath. Bath 
was in much favour in those days. It is true 
that Jane Austen had not yet written some of 
the best of her novels there, but Anstey and 
many others had celebrated the place in songs, 
and lampoons, and prose sketches. Folks be- 
lieved in the virtues of the waters, sipped and 
simpered, bathed together, walked in Milsom 
Street in the afternoon, and gambled at the 
card-tables at night. Nelson thought the place 
hotter than the West Indies. The climate ap- 
pears to have changed since his time. He 
found his wife well, and she took him in hand 
and nursed him with devotion. He was in 
London in September. While he was in lodg- 
ings, news came of Admiral Duncan's victory 
over the Dutch. London was in an uproar. 
The streets were crowded with yelling and 



TenerifFe 



117 



cheering mobs. Nelson was lying in his bed 
in great pain, hoping to gain some rest at the 
cost of a draught of laudanum, when a crowd 
of people, observing that the house was not 
illuminated, began to thunder upon the door. 
A servant informed them that Sir Horatio 
Nelson, who had been badly wounded at Tene- 
riffe, lodged there and could not be disturbed. 
" Nelson ! " was the general exclamation, and 
one of the foremost of the party cried out, 
"You will hear no more from us to-night." 
" ^y general reception from John Bull has 
been just what I wished," he wrote to Lord St. 
Vincent. 

Nature effected for Nelson what the science 
of that day was unequal to. Dec. 8, 1797, we 
meet with this touching entry, a note sent to 
the Rev. Mr. Greville, of St. George's, Hanover 
Square : — 

" An officer desires to return thanks to Al- 
mighty God for his perfect recovery from a 
severe wound, and also for the many mercies 
bestowed upon him. (For next Sunday.) " 

Lord Eldon relates that the King, on Nel- 
son's appearance at Court, after acknowledging 
his great services, added, with significant refer- 
ence to the loss of his arm : " But your country 
has a claim for a bit more of you," But by 



1 1 8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

this time Nelson's mind was easy. He had 
discovered that " the country " did not mean to 
dispense with the services of a left-handed 
Admiral whose soul reposed in the skin of a 
Nelson. The Admiralty decided to give him 
the " Foudroyant," but, as she could not be 
got ready in time to enable him to join Lord 
St. Vincent without delay, he hoisted his flag 
on board the " Vanguard," and was off Cadiz 
with the fleet under Jervis on April 30. 

Rumours had reached the ears of St. Vincent 
of a powerful congregation of shipping in 
Toulon, and Nelson was sent into the Mediter- 
ranean with a small squadron to learn all he 
could about it. The report reached this 
country, and universal uneasiness prevailed, 
from the King to the shoeblack. What was 
the design of that French force ? Was its 
object the capture of Ireland ? Did it mean 
to sweep the Channel ? Were our West 
Indian possessions its quarry ? Government 
reinforced Lord St. Vincent, and directed him 
to detach a squadron up the Mediterranean 
under the command of a discreet flag-officer, 
who, if he fell in with a French force, was to 
use his utmost endeavours to take, sink, or 
destroy it. 

The choice of Nelson excited some ill-blood. 



Teneriffe 1 1 9 

Sir William Parker and Sir John Orde were 
both Nelson's seniors. Orde sent St. Vincent 
a challenge, but the duel did not come off. 
Indeed, in other ways at this time Orde ren- 
dered himself offensive. The Earl, when Nel- 
son was objected to as a junior officer, justly 
replied, " Those who are responsible for meas- 
ures have a right to choose their men." A 
letter from one of the puisne Lords of the 
Admiralty, insolently denouncing St. Vincent 
for sending so young a flag-officer as Nelson to 
seek the French fleet, was publicly read on 
board Sir William Parker's ship, the " Prince 
George." That seasoned old salt, Jervis, stuck 
to his opinion and his choice, and wrote thus to 
Lady Hamilton : " I am bound by my oath of 
chivalry to protect all who are persecuted and 
distressed, and I would fly to the succour of 
their Sicilian majesties was I not positively 
forbid to quit my post before Cadiz. I am 
happy, however, to have a knight of superior 
prowess in my train who is charged with this 
enterprise at the head of as gallant a band as 
ever drew sword or trailed a pike." It is queer 
to find the dialect of Euphues in the mouth of 
an old tar who had spent a large portion of his 
days in fighting his country's enemies and in 
chewing his country's bad salt junk. But it 



I 20 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

will be seen that his Lordship was addressing 
Lady Hamilton. 

This woman's acquaintance Nelson had made 
when he was in the " Agamemnon " in the 
Mediterranean. He had called on the British 
Ambassador, Sir WiUiam Hamilton, at Naples, 
and here he had been introduced to the Sicilian 
King and his Court. He had also met Lady 
Hamilton. His earlier biographers call her 
" the bewitching siren." It is doubtful, how- 
ever, if the fascination of purely sensuous 
charms can ever wholly dominate the neutral- 
ising element of vulgarity in a woman. It is 
true that Lady Hamilton played very well and 
sang ; she could also act, and she spoke Italian, 
but not good English. I think it is of Mrs. 
Pritchard that Dr. Johnson somewhere says that 
when she was on the stage she was all that was 
refined, and when she was off she would speak 
of her gownd. Nelson does not appear to have 
been immediately captured by Emma's charms. 
To his wife he could find no more to say about 
her than this : " She is a young woman of 
amiable manners, and who does honour to the 
station in which she is raised." Raised from 
what? The subject is not savoury, but it can- 
not be shirked. She had been a nursemaid, 
and then she worked for a time as servant in 



TenerifFe 121 

the family of a tradesman. She lived with 
Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh, and afterwards 
with the Hon. Charles Greville. An obscene 
baboon called Graham hired her for his 
"Temple" as the "Goddess of Health." In 
1786 Greville relinquished the beauty to his 
uncle, Sir William Hamilton, whose mistress 
she was till Sept. 6, 1791, on which date the 
old man married her. The finger of scorn has 
been pointed at Sir William, and certainly the 
figure he makes in his domestic relations but 
ill accords with those lofty sentiments and 
exalted principles which we are accustomed to 
think of as animating the breasts of our British 
Ambassadors. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that he was a widower. By his licentious- 
ness he insulted no wife, by his marriage he 
affronted no children. " When we hear of him 
in this connection we find something senile in 
his conduct, and pity is mingled with contempt. 
Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson describes Lady Hamilton, 
when she was about twenty-three or twenty-four 
years old, as lithe, lissom, agile, and slim. 
Waist of the right type for health and classic 
grace. Full breasts and swelling hips — in 
short, her youth betokened that there would be 
a great plenty of her when she grew old. And, 
indeed, she became very fat. Her hair was a 



122 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

deep brown, but Mr. Jeaffreson finds that it 
lacked " the feathery softness of the Byronic 
curls." 

In 1815 a book called "The Memoirs of 
Lady Hamilton," was published anonymously. 
There is strong internal evidence for sup- 
posing that these " Memoirs " were inspired by 
Lady Nelson, just as Lady Hamilton dictated 
most of that " Life of Nelson " which is known 
by the name of Harrison's. The writer of 
these " Memoirs " gives Emma plenty of iron- 
ical praise, and this praise, couched as it is, 
would be relished by Lady Nelson, of whom, 
perhaps, some of these days, we shall be having 
a " Life," and I am bound to say that the justi- 
fication of this good, virtuous, affectionate lady 
is directly invited by Captain Mahan's remarks 
about the Nelson family clinging to Lady Ham- 
ilton, and their coldness to Lady Nelson, not 
to mention that odd passage concerning an 
anonymous letter. The writer of these " Me- 
moirs " describes Emma when a servant girl, 
thus : — 

" To a figure of uncommon elegance were 
added features perfectly regular, with a counte- 
nance of such indescribable sweetness of expres- 
sion as fixed the beholder in admiration. The 
airiness of her form gave a peculiar grace to her 



TenerifFe 



123 



movements, and such was the flexibility of her 
Hmbs that she might have been considered as a 
mountain nymph. Her agility, however, though 
light and sportive, had nothing in it of boisterous 
activity ; nor in the gaiety which she supported 
did there appear any of that levity which seems 
to court, instead of repeUing, temptation. 
Among the many attractions which at this 
period distinguished the female of whom we are 
speaking, that of a very musical voice was one 
which could hardly fail, in the situation where 
she was placed, to excite attention and inflame 
vanity. Having the advantage of a good ear, 
aided by a retentive memory, she w asa ^abled 
to sing popular airs with considerable effect ; 
and the opportunities which she enjoyed of fre- 
quenting places of public amusement served to 
increase the passion for dramatic entertainment. 
The eff^ect produced by these exhibitions was 
that of adding to her love of singing a strong 
turn for mimicry, which was encouraged by her 
companions to such a degree as to become the 
subject of general conversation." 

Her capacity as an actress was certainly ex- 
traordinary. It is said that with a common 
piece of stuif she could so arrange it and clothe 
herself as to oflfer life-like and startling repre- 
sentations of such people as a Jewess, a Roman 



I 24 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

matron, a Helen, Penelope, or Aspasia. The 
shawl dance was said to owe its origin to her 
invention. Her voice was such that she was 
offered two thousand guineas to sing for the 
season at the Opera House, London. Yet this 
lively lady, when living with Graham, used to 
be sunk in a mud bath, and exhibit nothing but 
her head, with her hair elaborately dressed in 
the prevailing fashion, with powder, flowers, 
ropes of pearls, and feathers ! She was loyal to 
her mother, and she must be honoured for that. 
This mother was a vulgar woman, whose name 
was Mary Kidd ; she became Mary Lyon by 
marriage. When she was a widow she took the 
name of Doggen or Dogan, which was lifted 
into elegance by being pronounced and spelt 
Cadogan ; but though her name was high her 
strain kept low. Mr. W. H. Long, the latest 
editor of the " Memoirs," says of her : " The 
good woman, though mixing much with high 
society through her daughter, still retained some 
of the plebeian tastes of her early condition. At 
an entertainment given in honour of the English 
fleet at Naples, at the drinking of a toast Mrs. 
C. exclaimed, ' They may talk of their Lach- 
rymae Christi and stuff, but give me a glass of 
London gin before a whole bottle of it ! ' As 
there happened to be a few bottles of gin on 



TenerifFe 125 

board one of the ships her wish was speedily 
gratified. But she certainly possessed some 
sterling qualities, for Lord Nelson wrote of her 
with respect and sent her presents, and Sir W. 
Hamilton, who must have known her intimately 
during her residence under his roof, left her an 
annuity of ;!f 100 for life." 

Nelson himself is described by a lady who 
was much in his company at Naples, as " little, 
and not remarkable in his person either way ; 
but he has great animation of countenance and 
activity in his appearance ; his manners are un- 
affectedly simple and modest." He was not yet 
forty years of age. It is strange that the lady 
(Cornelia Knight) should not have commented 
upon the deep furrows in his face. The best of 
his portraits show him as heavily lined, as 
though with constant anxiety. Much, however, 
of this may have been due to pain and to con- 
stitutional delicacy. 

He was now to hunt the Mediterranean for 
the French fleet. It had sailed from Toulon — 
a formidable armament full of soldiers and sail- 
ors — in the same weather that had wrecked the 
" Vanguard " aloft. What was the destination 
of this force ? Nelson writes to his wife : " I 
yet live in hopes of meeting these fellows ; but 
it would have been my delight to have Bona- 



126 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

parte on a wind, for he commands the fleet as 
well as the army. Glory is my object, and that 
alone." Did he ever write this last sentence ? 
The letter is printed by Clarke and McArthur, 
who scandalously melodramatised this great man. 
The hunt after the Frenchman is only to be 
paralleled by the hunt after the same enemy in 
.1805. 

At last the " Culloden," commanded by Cap- 
tain Troubridge, having been sent into the Gulf 
of Coron for intelligence, returned with a French 
brig she had captured, and Nelson heard that 
the French fleet had been seen steering to the 
south-east from Candia, about f3ur weeks before. 
This intelligence was confirmed by a vessel that 
passed close to the British, and Nelson imme- 
diately made all sail for Alexandria. In the 
evening the signal was flown for the fleet to 
close, and early on the morning of August i 
the " Zealous " made the signal of the French 
fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay, — sixteen sail 
of the line, so she signalled. 

The French force consisted of thirteen sail of 
the line and four frigates. It is said that for 
many preceding days Nelson had scarcely eaten 
or slept, but when the French ships were dis- 
covered he ordered dinner to be served. His 
early biographers tell us that on his officers ris- 



TenerifFe 



127 



ing from table, he exclaimed, " Before this time 
to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or 
Westminster Abbey." A delightful sight those 
ships must have made for the eyes of the British 
to feast on, sick as the sailors were of scouring 
the Mediterranean in search of them. They 
lay in a curved line, the stately central link of 
which was the " Orient," a monster of one hun- 
dred and twenty guns, believed to have been 
manned by one thousand seamen and soldiers. 
With what sensations did the French view the 
approaching enemy ! They counted, it is true, 
their line of defence impregnable, flanked as it 
was by batteries, but they also knew that Nelson 
was in that approaching fleet ; and as they lay 
at anchor they watched with profound anxiety 
the steady advance of our noble ships. 

Perhaps the most decisive sea-battle that was 
ever fought was about to begin. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE NILE 



THE waters of Aboukir Bay on August i, 
1798, a little time before seven o'clock, 
at which hour Captain Berry, of the " Van- 
guard," tells us it fell dark, presented a picture 
there is no magic in ink to conjure up to the 
vision of another ; the brush of the great 
marine painter could alone express it. The 
scarlet of the sunset was in the air when the 
ships of Nelson heeled to the breeze as they 
hauled the wind, clewing up their royals as 
they did so. The low land ran in purple, 
darkening towards Alexandria, with the loom 
of Pharos Tower fading in the evening air. 
In safety afar might be hovering some boat or 
other of lateen rig, a dash of keen white upon 
the pulsing blue of the waters. Hands swung 
over the side of each ship, heaving the lead. 
Ground tackle was got along the decks to 
enable the ships to anchor by the stern. All 
was silent upon the darkening waters as the 
British floated towards that long line of enemy. 



The Nile 129 

There might have been irresolution there. 
Would the British attack that night ? Yes ! 
mark how they haul their wind in succession. 
The Admiral (De Brueys) signals for topgallant 
yards to be crossed : changes his mind and 
tells his people by flags that he will engage the 
enemy at anchor. He declares he has not sea- 
men enough to fight under sail ; every ship, 
according to De Brueys, wanted two hundred 
more good men than she had. In fact, the 
Frenchman declares that most of the people 
were ashore when the "Heureux" made the 
signal for a sail W.N.W,, and only a small 
number obeyed the order to repair on board 
their respective ships. There is always a reason 
for being beaten, and statistics are invariably on 
the side of the angels. 

Whatever doubts and hesitations may have 
shot tremors through the souls of the gallant 
fellows v.'ho manned that looming line of battle- 
ships in Aboukir Bay, nothing like irresolution 
was to be heard of in Nelson's seventy-fours. 
For days and days, his biographers say, this 
great Admiral had meditated the matter of the 
French fleet, and considered the enemy in every 
posture imaginable to the experience of a sea- 
man, and time after time he had called his 
captains aboard and conferred with them, and 

9 



130 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

submitted his plans, and given his directions, 
insomuch, it is declared, that when the French 
fleet were sighted every British commander 
knew so exactly what was to be done as to 
render signals hardly necessary. 

What, then, becomes of the claim of Captain 
Foley of the " GoHah " ? This ship and the 
" Zealous " had the honour of leading. It is 
claimed for Foley that on his own responsibility 
he deviated from Nelson's plan and orders by 
passing inside the enemy. Sir Charles Napier 
stoutly contended for this. Sir Charles says : 
" Lord Nelson was not the man who proved 
the adventure ; the exploit was achieved by Sir 
Thomas Foley." (Think of the Battle of the 
Nile won by Foley ! Startling news, surely, 
for the historian.) " The chivalrous com- 
mander of the * Goliah ' began the action," pro- 
ceeds Sir Charles ; " he it was who in this 
critical moment saw that there was room to pass 
between the shore and the enemy's fleet." See- 
ing that other ships followed Foley's example, 
Napier's arguments would lead us to suppose 
that there was rebellion and mutiny amongst 
the officers under Nelson. 

♦* Garth did not write his own Dispensary." 

It does not seem, however, to have occurred 
to Napier that Nelson himself decisively settled 



The Nile 131 

the question. In a letter to Lord Howe dated 
January, 1799, ^^ wrote thus: "It was only 
this moment that I had the invaluable approba- 
tion of the great, the immortal Earl Howe — 
an honour the most flattering a Sea officer could 
receive, as it comes from the first and greatest 
Sea officer the world has ever produced. I had 
the happiness to command a Band of Brothers ; 
therefore night was to my advantage. Each 
knew his duty, and I was sure each would feel 
for a French ship. By attacking the Enemy's 
van and centre, the wind blowing directly along 
their line, I was enabled to throw what force I 
pleased on a few ships. This plan my friends 
readily conceived by the signals (for which we 
are principally, if not entirely, indebted to your 
Lordship), and we always kept a superior force 
to the Enemy. At twenty-eight minutes past 
six, the sun in the horizon, the firing com- 
menced. At five minutes past ten, when 
"L' Orient" blew up, having burnt seventy 
minutes, the six Van ships had surrendered. I 
then pressed further towards the Rear ; and had 
it pleased God that I had not been wounded 
and stone blind there cannot be a doubt but 
that every ship would have been in our posses- 
sion. But here let it not be supposed that any 
officer is to blame. No, on my honour I am 



132 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

satisfied each did his very best. I have never 
before, my Lord, detailed the action to anyone, 
but I should have thought it wrong to have 
kept it from one who is our great Master in 
Naval tactics and bravery." 

We will take it, in spite of the gallant Foley 
and Sir Charles Napier (they were related by 
marriage), that Nelson's magnificent tactical 
success was the offspring of his own brain, of 
his only. Before the guns of the contending 
fleet deafen us, however, it is worth pointing 
out that had the ships been steamers fitted even 
with auxiliary screws (the Frenchmen prepared 
for steaming), the battle could never have been 
fought on the lines laid down by Nelson. The 
rearmost ships of the French would have 
steamed up to the assistance of those of the 
van, upon whom the British had thrown their 
full weight. Would there have been room ? 
They would have found room. By very simple 
evolutions they could have brought their broad- 
sides to bear. 

A grievous disaster befell the British force 
on the very threshold. The " Culloden," com- 
manded by Captain Troubridge, went ashore. 
All that seamanship could do to warp her off 
was done — to no purpose. It is not hard to 
figure the sensations of the heroic Troubridge 



The Nile 



133 



and the wrath and dismay of his gallant ship's 
company. Thus was Nelson's force weakened 
by seventy-four guns, by the deprivation of the 
services of a large body of splendid sailors, and 
by the virtual extinction of one of the ablest 
and most trusted of his captains. 

When the battle commenced it was as 
black as a thunderstorm, wild and frightful with 
the ceaseless flashing of guns and the rolling 
roar of artillery. As the EngHsh ships ap- 
proached, the French poured a heavy fire into 
them. But the British were bow on and made 
no reply. Then the " Goliah " swept the 
" Guerrier " with a broadside and let go her 
stern anchors abreast of the ship. She dragged, 
and brought up alongside the " Conquerant." 
The "Zealous" brought up on the " Guer- 
rier's " bow. Thus one by one, some inside, 
some outside the line of enemy, did the British 
ships station themselves, pouring, two ships to 
one, tremendous broadsides into the trapped 
and already beaten foe. " The French fought 
stubbornly, with great firmness and delibera- 
tion," says Berry. But when Nelson's tactics 
had been gathered, what would be the feelings 
of the people on board the rearmost of the 
Frenchmen who lay helpless and dumb at their 
anchors ? A more wonderful and appalling 



134 



Pictures from the Life of Nelson 



scene of conflict cannot be figured. The five 
foremost ships of the French having been 
beaten, that huge vessel, the " Orient," took 
fire. When she was seen to be in a blaze, 
the crews of the war-ships in her neighbour- 
hood cleared their decks of all combustibles, 
and wetted their sails, and men with buckets of 
water were stationed in all parts of them. But 
even when the French giantess was in flames 
throughout her lower decks, the rage of her 
crew held them valiantly fighting their upper 
guns. 

A ship on fire is a terrific spectacle at any- 
time. But here was one of the hugest ships 
then afloat in flames, full of gunpowder and 
deadly explosives, in the heart of as many ves- 
sels as would fill Tilbury Docks. The stoutest 
held their breath. When would the explosion 
happen ? Fore and aft at ten o'clock the flames 
were licking the stooping heavens ; her sprit- 
sail yard and bowsprit were black with men. 
By the ghastly effulgence was the whole scene 
of battle rendered visible. Every rope, every 
spar was touched, and sprang in lines of light 
into the painting of a mutilated war-ship. It 
was as though a city were on fire. As far off 
as Rosetta the glowing scarlet over the roaring 
and crackhng "Orient" was as visible as a sun- 



The Nile 



135 



set. " Motionless bodies of Arabs," it has been 
written, " might be seen ashore watching the 
sight." The explosion was as of some enormous 
force of nature. Every ship was shaken to her 
heart. The air was aflame with the volcanic 
upheavals of burning wreckage, and the water 
shrieked in clouds of steam as it was pierced 
by the falling javelins of fire. 

No lightning stroke could be more dazzling ; 
the vision groped in vain, for when that mighty 
light went out a midnight darkness seemed to 
roll upon the sea. A universal hush followed 
the explosion. The water was full of drowning 
and swimming men, says a writer in " Black- 
wood's." "Oh, bon John, give rop 'e — give 
rop 'e," the miserable wretches cried. Many 
were picked up. To a French sailor thus 
rescued, an English officer said, " Well, Mon- 
sieur, what think you now of your Bonaparte ? " 
The poor fellow, half dead, blustered out, " Oh, 
Monsieur John Bull, dis nothing, dis nothing. 
Vive Napoleon! Vive Napoleon!" 

The "Orient" was the flag-ship of Admiral 
de Brueys. But long before the explosion 
occurred he had been killed. He had already 
been wounded in the head and arm when a 
cannon-ball struck him, and almost cut him 
in two. He begged to be left to lie upon the 



136 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

deck, and soon afterwards expired. It is a pity 
that glory should be so bloody. But what was 
blood to Bonaparte ? The blood that reddened 
the waters of Aboukir Bay was shed by him, 
not by the British. We were ever lovers of 
peace, and when we fought it was for the preser- 
vation of our throne and country — nay, for our 
very hearths. 

Commodore Casabianca and his son, a boy 
aged ten, were on board the " Orient." But 
the lad was not blown sky-high, as Mrs. 
Hemans feigns. When the ship blew up 
father and son were in the water, holding by 
some wreckage, seeking each other. The ex- 
plosion killed them. A French account makes 
out that after the explosion of the " Orient " 
hostilities were suspended for a quarter of an 
hour, owing to the consternation and horror 
excited in both fleets by that momentary glimpse 
of hell. But then the breeze was filled again 
by the thunder of guns, and one realises the 
storm of morbleus, diables, and sacres which rose 
to the heaven from the rearmost ships of the 
French as the tide of battle rolled roaring down 
the line. 

Nelson had been wounded comparatively 
early in the engagement. The " Vanguard," 
flying his flag, had anchored by the stern abreast 



The Nile 137 

of the French " Spartiate." Nelson was looking 
over a rough sketch of the Bay of Aboukir 
which had been found in a French ship by Cap- 
tain Hallowell, when he was hit athwart the fore- 
head by a langridge shot ; the skin fell in a flap 
over his eyes and blinded him. He reeled, and 
Berry caught him. " I am killed," he cried. 
" Remember me to my wife." They carried him 
below to the cockpit, and the surgeon was for 
immediately attending him, but he exclaimed: 
" No, I will take my turn with my brave fel- 
lows." His suffering convinced him that he 
was a dying man. He refused to believe the 
assurances of the surgeon that there was no dan- 
ger, and calling the chaplain to his side, he asked 
him to convey his dying remembrance to Lady 
Nelson. 

Captain Louis, commanding the " Mino- 
taur," had so stationed himself ahead of the 
"Vanguard" as effectually to relieve the Ad- 
miral's ship from the furious fire of the " Aqui- 
lon." It is related in the " I^aval Chronicle" 
that Nelson, conceiving himself to be dying, was 
desirous of thanking Louis for his noble be- 
haviour. He sent for him, and the meeting 
between the two heroic characters is said to have 
been extremely affecting. Louis held his hand 
in silent sorrow. Nelson bade him farewell. 



138 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

" And now," said he, " whatever may become of 
me, my mind is at peace." 

He was reassured when the wound was 
dressed ; he was wiUing to agree with the doctor 
that it was not dangerous ; he was entreated to 
remain quiet, but he was anxious to write a 
despatch to the Admiralty. His secretary, who 
was himself wounded, was so much affected by 
Nelson's condition that he was unable to write 
to his dictation. The chaplain was then sent 
for, and while he was coming Nelson's impa- 
tience was so great that in some blind fashion he 
was trying to scrawl out with his left hand a few 
words interpreting the emotions which were 
shaking his great and gallant heart. Here we 
have a picture surely not less impressive and 
affecting than any that preceded it, than any 
save one that can follow it. Always bear in 
mind the rude interior of that man-of-war dimly 
lighted ; the thrilling crash of shot in the solid 
timber above ; the muffled thunder of artillery ; 
the shouts of men wrestling half-naked at the 
guns. That central figure of this bloody fight 
staggers with ensanguined brow to the table, 
and, filled with the transports of victory, blindly 
essays to write. 

But now the " Orient " was on fire, and Cap- 
tain Berry came below to report the fact. It is 



The Nile i 39 

said that Nelson went on deck and watched the 
appalling sight. The resistance in the rear was 
not very stubborn. Two powerful French ships, 
the " Guillaume Tell " and the " Gene'-^ux,'' 
and two frigates, escaped. Another ship drove 
ashore, and was subsequently fired by her own 
people. In all, the French ships taken or de- 
stroyed amounted to thirteen. Thirteen out of 
seventeen ! What a very small balance to 
leave old Boney ! But small as it was, it 
was doomed to diminution yet by the later 
capture of the "Guillaume Tell", and the 
Genereux. 

It is impossible to convey an idea of the sen- 
sation excited in London by the news of this 
victory. Nelson's failure in discovering the 
enemy's fleet had excited much uneasiness and 
even indignation, and Government was censured 
in no measured terms for intrusting a command 
of supreme importance to a young Rear-Admiral. 
Then came Captain Capel with the news on 
October 2, 1798, and round flashed that worth- 
less weathercock, called public opinion, right 
slap into the wind's eye, — a very fair wind for 
Nelson, — with a shriek that must have meant 
joy, as the tail of the thing swept to leeward. 
Lord Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, 
asked God to bless "my dear Sir Horatio," 



140 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Lady Spencer, hysterical with composite emo- 
tion — for had not Nelson justified her husband ? 
. -— writes : " Joy, joy, joy to you, brave, gallant, 
immo.lalised Nelson ! May that great God 
whose cause you so valiantly support protect 
and bless you to the end of your brilliant career ! 
Such a race surely never was run. My heart 
is absolutely bursting with different sensations of 
joy, of gratitude, of pride, of every emotion that 
ever warmed the bosom of a British woman on 
hearing of her country's glory." 

The King's Speech on November 20 ran : 
" By this great and brilliant victory, an enter- 
prise of which the injustice, perfidy, and extra- 
vagance had fixed the attention of the world, 
and which was peculiarly directed against some 
of the most valuable interests of the British 
Empire, has in the first instance been turned to 
the confusion of its authors." Nelson was made 
Baron Nelson of the Nile and Burnham Thorpe. 
The House of Commons voted him a pension 
of two thousand a year, and the same sum to 
the two next heirs to the title. Special gold 
medals were ordered. Gifts of splendour reached 
him : a gold box set with diamonds from the 
Emperor of Russia, a " Plume of Triumph " 
blazing with diamonds from the Sultan of Tur- 
key. The East India Company presented him 



The Nile 141 

with ten thousand pounds. There were many 
other costly gifts. 

Two ships, the " CuUoden" and "Alexander," 
were sent to Naples to refit. The King went 
out to them in his barge, accompanied by a 
boatload of fiddlers. You will suppose that 
Lady Hamilton was not far off. She and Sir 
William went on board in a barge of their own, 
and they too were accompanied by musicians. 
All is gingerbread and tinsel. The Queen of 
Naples on receiving the news of the victory had 
fainted, recovered, cried, laughed, daJiced, and 
kissed everybody she could catch hold of. Lady 
Hamilton also took care to faint. The Queen's 
children scampered about mad with delight. 
Contrast all this — those barges, those boatloads 
of fiddlers — with the two grim ships in the bay, 
silent but significant with their iron guns, the 
Jacks looking out of the ports, the officers un- 
emotionally moving about the quarter-deck. In 
fact, fighting for the Italians was a service never 
much relished by the British seamen. Nelson 
himself seems to have abhorred the prospect of 
returning to Naples. He hated all foreigners. 

Nelson arrived at Naples Bay on board the 
" Vanguard " on September 11. His health 
was very low ; he complained of his head as 
being ready to split, of incessant sickness, of a 



142 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

fever which he said had nearly done his busi- 
ness. Ill as he was, however, he appears to 
have been much impressed and affected by his 
reception at Naples. The bay was covered with 
barges and boats and radiant with bunting and 
gay apparel, the blue waters mirrored the sparkle 
of gaudy uniforms, numberless bands of music 
played " God Save the King," " Rule Britannia," 
and " See the Conquering Hero Comes." The 
simplicity of Nelson's nature curiously appears 
in a passage in the letter which he wrote to his 
wife describing his reception : " Sir WilHam and 
Lady Hamilton came out to sea, attended by 
numerous boats with emblems, etc. They, my 
most respectable friends, had nearly been laid 
up and seriously ill — first from anxiety and 
then from joy. It was imprudently told Lady 
Hamilton in a moment, and the effect was like 
a shot. She fell, apparently dead, and is not 
yet perfectly recovered from severe bruises." 
Surely a very good story for the marines ! The 
bruises proved that Emma was not such an 
excellent actress as we are asked to believe. 
Even a middling performer should be able to 
fall down in an assumed faint without severely 
bruising herself 

Sir William and his wife came alongside the 
" Vanguard ; " Emma flew up the gangway lad- 



The Nile 



H3 



der, and shrieking, " O God ! is it possible ! " 
fell into Nelson's arms. A shower of tears seems 
to have relieved her, and while she was blubber- 
ing, up steps the King, Grasping Nelson by 
the hand, his Majesty called him his Deliverer 
and Preserver. 

Nelson went to the Hamlltons' house, and 
Lady Hamilton nursed him. The windows 
commanded a magnificent view of the bay. 
When the full moon rose It seemed to float from 
the crater of Mount Vesuvius. The Hghts of 
the fishing-boats sparkled In the brilliant haze 
of the night-beam. All was beauty outside and 
elegance and hospitality within. Lady Hamil- 
ton's radical vulgarity Is visible in her methods 
of celebrating the Battle of the Nile. She even 
went the length of walking about the streets 
with the words " Nelson and Victory " on a 
bandeau on her forehead. One hears of noth- 
ing but festivities, of bonfires and fireworks. 
This Is how Lady Hamilton celebrated Nelson's 
birthday. The guests numbered eighteen hun- 
dred. A rostral column was erected under a 
gorgeous canopy, and on it were inscribed 
" VenI, VIdi, Vicl." Nelson wrote to his wife 
with a boy's glee : Lady Hamilton's prepara- 
tions for celebrating his birthday, he says, are 
enough to fill him with vanity ; every ribbon, 



1 44 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

every button has " Nelson." He tells his wife 
of the songs and sonnets composed in honour 
of him. He does not pause to reflect how his 
representations of Lady Hamilton's devotion 
might weigh with his wife. Perhaps it was her 
duty to have joined him ; perhaps she might 
have read between the lines that she was not 
wanted. Her son, Josiah Nisbet, was at Naples, 
and so, doubtless, gave her all the news. That 
she was sensible of being repelled seems to have 
been conveyed in a letter which Nelson received 
from Alexander Davison. He wrote that Lady 
Nelson was in good health, " but very uneasy 
and anxious, which is not to be wondered at. . . . 
She bids me say that unless you return home in 
a few months she will join the " Vanguard " at 
Naples. Excuse a woman's tender feelings — 
they are too acute to be expressed." At an 
earlier period, Josiah Nisbet had lost his temper 
and created a disturbance amongst the guests of 
Lady Hamilton : possibly he was " flown with 
wine and insolence ; " he was so offensive to 
Nelson that Troubridge and another officer put 
him out of the room. 

Yet, though Nelson could write gleefully to 
his wife of fetes and bandeaux and buttons and 
rostral columns, his secret loathing for the peo- 
ple he was called upon to protect he could 



The Nile 145 

scarcely find words to convey. Even on the 
day following Lady Hamilton's celebration of 
his birthday, he was writing thus to Lord St. 
Vincent : " I am very unwell, and the miserable 
conduct of the Court is not likely to cool my 
irritable temper. It is a country of fiddlers and 

poets, w and scoundrels." 

The passage that relates to the flight of the 
King and Queen of Naples on board the " Van- 
guard " glows with as strong a light of romance 
as any in the career of Nelson. The King's 
cowardice and the miserable procrastinating pol- 
icy of the Court, could result in nothing but 
the evacuation of Naples. On December 2.0, 
1798, a memorandum marked '•^ most secret'' was 
sent to those concerned. Three barges and a 
small cutter belonging to a frigate, armed with 
cutlasses only, were to be at such and such a 
place at half-past seven o'clock. This and a 
little more was signed " Nelson." That the 
royal flight was in contemplation before this 
date is shown in certain entries in the " Journal " 
under December 18 and 19. We hear of the 
sail-makers making cots for the royal family on 
board the " Vanguard," of painters painting the 
ward-room and ofiices under the poop, and of 
boats bringing ofi^ the valuable effects of the 

King and Queen in the night. 

10 



146 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

All, then, was in readiness, but Lady Hamil- 
ton's finger must be in this pie, and so we 
get a Rosa Matilda romance out of it. Ac- 
cording to Southey, Emma made every arrange- 
ment for the removal of the royal family. The 
King was as much afraid of his friends as he 
was of his enemies ; the man in the street was 
attached to his Majesty's person, and as the un- 
fortunate fellow believed himself strong enough 
to fight for the King, he had no idea of allowing 
him to run away. Next to the safety of the 
royal family must, of course, be the safeguard- 
ing of their precious goods. Southey tells us 
of Lady Hamilton, at the risk of her life, ex- 
ploring a subterraneous passage leading from the 
palace to the seaside. Through this passage, 
all very darkly, breathlessly, and mysteriously, 
treasure, paintings, sculptures, and the like, val- 
ued at two millions and a half, were conveyed to 
the shore and stowed safely on board the Eng- 
lish ships. Then, continues Southey in effect, 
Nelson went ashore, embarked the whole of the 
royal family in three barges, and carried them 
safely through a tremendous sea to the " Van- 
guard." As Nelson claims for Lady Hamilton 
a 'large share in this romantic procedure, we 
have a right to suppose that she had a hand 
in it. 



The Nile 147 

Nelson's own description of these proceed- 
ings is highly interesting. I give it in a slightly- 
abridged letter to Lord St. Vincent, written in 
December, 1798. " On the 14th, the Marquis 
de Niza, with three of the Portuguese Squadron, 
arrived from Leghorn, as did Captain Hope in 
the ' Alcmene ' from Egypt ; from this time 
the danger for the personal safety of their Si- 
cilian Majesties was daily increasing, and new 
treasons were found out even to the Minister of 
War. The whole correspondence relative to 
this important business was carried > on with 
the greatest address by Lady Hamilton and the 
Queen, who, being constantly in the habits of 
correspondence, no one could suspect. It would 
have been highly imprudent in either Sir Wil- 
liam or myself to have gone to Court, as we 
knew that all our movements were watched, and 
even an idea by the Jacobins of arresting our 
persons as a hostage (as they foolishly imagined) 
against the attack of Naples should the French 
get possession of it. 

" Lady Hamilton, from this time to the 21st, 
every night received the jewels of the Royal 
Family, etc., etc., and such clothes as might be 
necessary for the very large party to embark, to 
the amount, I am confident, of full two millions 
five hundred thousand pounds sterling. On 



148 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

the 1 8th, General Mack wrote that he had no 
prospect of stopping the progress of the French, 
and entreated their Majesties to think of retir- 
ing from Naples with their august Family as 
expeditiously as possible. All the Neapolitan 
Navy were now taken out of the Mole, consist- 
ing of three Sail of the Line and three frigates ; 
the seamen from the two Sail of the Line in the 
Bay left their ships and went on shore. A party 
of English seamen with Officers were sent from 
the ^ Vanguard ' to assist in navigating them to 
a place of safety. From the i8th various plans 
were formed for the removal of the Royal 
Family from the palace to the water-side ; on the 
19th I received a note from General Acton, say- 
ing that the King approved of my plan for their 
embarkation. This day, the 20th and 2ist, very 
large assemblies of people were in commotion, 
and several people were killed, and one dragged 
by the legs to the palace. The mob, by the 
20th, were very unruly, and insisted the Royal 
Family should not leave Naples ; however, they 
were pacified by the King and Queen speaking 
to them. 

" On the 2 1 St, at half-past eight p. m., three 
barges, with myself and Captain Hope, landed 
at a corner of the Arsenal. I went into the 
palace and brought out the whole Royal Family, 



The Nile 149 

put them into the Boats, and at half-past nine 
they were all safely on board the ' Vanguard/ 
when I gave immediate notice to all British 
Merchants that their persons would be received 
on board every and any ship in the Squadron, 
their effects of value being before embarked in 
the three EngHsh transports, who were partly 
unloaded, and I had directed that all the con- 
demned provisions should be thrown overboard 
in order to make room for their effects. Sir 
William Hamilton had also directed two vessels 
to be hired for the accommodation of the French 
emigrants, and provisions were supplied from our 
Victuallers ; in short, everything had been done 
for the comfort of all persons embarked. 

"On the 23rd, at 7 p. m., the * Vanguard,' 
' Sannite,' and ' Archimedes,' with about twenty 
sail of vessels, left the Bay of Naples ; the 
next day it blew harder than I ever expe- 
rienced since I have been at sea. Your Lord- 
ship will believe that my anxiety was not 
lessened by the great charge that was with me, 
but not a word of uneasiness escaped the lips 
of any of the Royal Family. On the 25th, at 
9 A. M., Prince Albert, their Majesties' youngest 
child, having eat a hearty breakfast, was taken 
ill, and at 7 p. m., died in the arms of Lady 
Hamilton ; and here it is my duty to tell 



I CO Pictures from the Life of Nelson 



J 



your Lordship the obHgations which the whole 
Royal Family, as well as myself, are under on 
this trying occasion, to her Ladyship. They 
necessarily came on board without a bed, nor 
could the least preparation be made for their 
reception. Lady Hamilton provided her own 
beds, linen, etc., and became their slave^ for ex- 
cept one man, no person belonging to Royalty 
assisted the Royal Family, nor did her Lady- 
ship enter a bed the whole time they were on 
board. Good Sir William also made every sac- 
rifice for the comfort of the august Family em- 
barked with him. I must not omit to state the 
kindness of Captain Hardy, and every officer 
in the ' Vanguard,' all of whom readily gave 
their beds for the convenience of the numerous 
persons attending the Royal Family." 

The flight was attended with several circum- 
stances of misery. First and foremost, the 
weather was extremely heavy, and the Italians 
are not good sailors. On board, at the start, 
everything was confusion and wretchedness. If 
the old line-of-battle ship knew how to fight, 
she also knew how to roll in a sea-way. Every- 
thing movable flew from side to side. The 
crash of crockery, the groans of the foreign 
stomach, the greasy appeal of despair to the Vir- 
gin Mary and the Saints, combined in a ghastly 



The Nile 151 

music of the deep. There was no fiddling. 
The bandeau was not thought of. No man sat 
down to write a sonnet to Nelson. At half-past 
one in the morning a blast of hurricane force 
blew the " Vanguard's " close-reefed topsail out 
of the bolt-ropes. The ship resounded with 
shrieks, in which the royal throats joined. In- 
deed, the King and Queen were now persuaded 
that they had only escaped the bayonet on shore 
to perish by drowning. Distinction of persons 
was lost. Everybody who could find room in 
Nelson's cabin squeezed there. Nelson himself 
was seasick, and here was a difficulty with which 
his instincts as a tactician were unable to cope. 
Sir William Hamilton was sought by his wife, 
who found him sitting in their cabin with a 
loaded pistol in each hand. In response to 
Emma's hysterical shriek of alarm, he told her 
in a cold voice and with a long face that he was 
resolved not to die with a " guggle — guggle — 
guggle " of the salt water in his throat, and 
therefore he was prepared as soon as he felt the 
ship sinking, to shoot himself. This is on the 
authority of the late Admiral W. H. Smyth, 
one of the ablest of our naval surveyors, and 
author of " The Sailor's Word-Book." 

But the general misery had not yet reached 
its height. On the evening of the twenty-fifth 



1 5 2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

poor little Prince Albert, who had been taken 
ill in the morning, died in Lady Hamilton's 
arms. Here was a stroke which must make 
every one forget contempt and disgust, and 
think with pity and sympathy of the unfor- 
tunate King and Queen. Palermo was reached 
in safety. The Queen remained for a little 
time in the ship ; Ferdinand, on the other 
hand, whose tastes and sensibilities were those 
of an Irish squireen, after making a hearty 
breakfast, went ashore, and Nelson saw that 
all proper honour was paid him by flying the 
royal standard, and so forth. One thinks with 
concern of Nelson at this time ; he is without 
sincerity in his professions of loyalty to the 
Court of Naples ; he hates them all round, but 
he is now under the Hamilton spell ; he cannot 
break away from the fascination of those enchant- 
ing eyes and that full form, and as Lord Keith 
afterwards discovered — but it was a conclusion 
that Troubridge and Ball had already arrived at 
— the conqueror of the Nile was much too en- 
thusiastic in the interpretation of his instructions 
with regard to the Court of Naples, much too 
willing to employ the British ships in the ser- 
vice of the Queen. Some sense of littleness of 
character may have visited him, and helped his 
illness to keep him irritable. His was strictly a 



The Nile 



153 



high conscience, and in his heart he was not the 
man to pretend to reconcile his devotion to the 
Neapolitan Court with either his duty to his 
country or his duty to his wife. 

Much petulance is visible in his correspon- 
dence at this period. He was greatly irritated, 
moreover, by the appointment of Captain Sir 
Sydney Smith in " Le Tigre," of eighty guns, in 
the Levant. " / do feel, for I am a man" he 
breaks out in italics to Lord St. Vincent, " that 
it is impossible for me to serve in these seas 
with a squadron under a junior officer. Could 
I have thought it ! — and from Earl Spencer ! " 
He frequently writes for permission to retire. 
He wants to go home. But Sir William and 
Lady Hamilton must accompany him. He 
tells Lady Parker in February, 1799, that she 
who remembers him always laughing would not 
credit the change in his appearance. He scarcely 
ever writes a letter, not strictly official, in which 
some reference or other to his " dear friends," 
his " invaluable friends," Sir William and Lady 
Hamilton, is not to be found. But what could 
have been his secret judgment of Sir William ? 
Did he flatter himself that the old man had not 
taken a very correct observation of what was 
passing under his nose ? What opinion would 
Nelson form of the principles and character of 



154 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

a man who could look on in silence while his 
hospitality and confidence were being abused ? 
All this Neapolitan business in Nelson's life 
makes melancholy and sickening reading. The 
page is haunted by a faint, insufferable odour — 
decayed perfume — nauseating aromas, such as 
the ghost of a courtesan might waft to your 
physical nostril from an immaterial handkerchief 
in her misty grasp. Music as mournful as the 
wailing of madness, and as dim as the voice of 
one encaverned, murmurs from the pages as you 
read, and lo ! a vision of ghastly Court fiddlers 
doing honour to Nelson with quivering elbows 
rises before you ; and Nelson, with Lady Ham- 
ilton by his side, seems to like it; but he does n't. 
He has no ear for music. Let the thunders of 
the Nile reverberate afresh and overwhelm that 
degrading noise of fiddling, and let the white 
powder-smoke roll over the printed page and 
breathe to us the true incense. 



CHAPTER VII 

SKETCHES AND INCIDENTS 

ON the morning of the 29th of June, 1799, 
eighteen ships of the hne were anchored 
in order of battle in Naples Bay. At the miz- 
zen-royal masthead of the " Foudroyant" the flag 
of Rear-Admiral Nelson was shaking. On the 
quarter-deck of this same ship were seated Nel- 
son and Lady Hamilton. What did the Jacks 
think? Why, of course they envied him. More- 
over, Lady Hamilton had contrived to render 
herself very popular with the seamen under 
Nelson. On more than one occasion had she 
been the instrument of rescuing a man from the 
lash. 

Presently a Neapolitan boat was observed to 
be making for the ship. In her was no less a 
personage than Caracciolo, a man so intimately 
identified with Nelson's name that people who 
have nothing to say about the Nile and Copen- 
hagen will talk to you with knowledge of the 
hanging of this poor devil. He was a prince, a 
man of ancient descent, originally Greek. He 



156 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

had risen to the post of commodore in the Nea- 
poHtan navy. He had attended the King and 
Queen to Palermo, then got leave to return to 
Naples, where he entered the service of the Par- 
thenopeian Republic, served as an admiral, and 
commanded a force against some of the royal 
frigates. He had retired to a fort from which 
he had made his escape up country. 

A traitor he was certainly, and therefore a 
villain. On the previous 29th of May Captain 
Foote wrote to Lord Nelson : " Caracciolo 
threatens a second attack with a considerable 
addition of force." Spite of his disguise, he 
was recognised and seized by some banditti, and 
brought away from the Calabrian cave in which 
he had been hiding. He was dragged on board 
the ship and placed in charge of an officer, who 
described him as a short, thick-set man of ap- 
parent strength, but haggard with misery and 
want : " His clothmg in wretched condition, but 
his countenance denoting stern resolution to 
endure that misery like a man." 

Count Thurn was commodore and com- 
mander of his Sicilian Majesty's frigate the 
" Minerva." On Caracciolo coming on board, 
the Count was ordered to assemble five of the 
senior officers under his command to inquire 
into the accusation of rebellion made against 



Sketches and Incidents 157 

the prisoner, who was further charged with fir- 
ing at the SiciHan colours hoisted on the " Min- 
erva." This court-martial was held on board 
the " Foudroyant," and it has generally been 
felt that, seeing that the "Minerva" was within 
convenient reach of a boat, a British man-of- 
war was not a proper place in which to have 
tried Caracciolo. His defence, as reported by 
one who was present, ran as follows : " I am 
accused," he said, " of deserting my King in 
distress and leaguing with his enemies. The 
accusation is so far false that the King deserted 
me and all his faithful subjects. It is well 
known to you, gentlemen, that our frontier was 
covered by an army under General Mack supe- 
rior to the advancing enemy, and you are aware 
that money is the sinews of war. The King 
collected everything that could be converted 
into specie on pretence of paying that army, 
embarked it in his Britannic Majesty's ship 
* Vanguard,' even to the enormous amount of 
five hundred casks, and fled with it to Palermo, 
there to riot in luxurious safety. Who was then 
the traitor — the King or myself.'' " 

All this was much to the point. The court, 
however, without losing time, found him guilty, 
and Nelson signed a certain mandate to Count 
Thurn in which occurs this very grim passage : 



158 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

" You are hereby required and directed to cause 
the said sentence of death to be carried into exe- 
cution upon the said Francisco Caraccioio ac- 
cordingly by hanging him at the fore-yardarm 
of his SiciHan Majesty's frigate, ' La Minerva/ 
under your command, at five o'clock this even- 
ing, and to cause him to hang there until sunset, 
when you will have his body cut down and 
thrown into the sea." 

This gave the unhappy man two hours in 
which to make his peace with God. The exe- 
cution was by many deemed little less than mur- 
der, and it was widely believed that the abrupt 
hanging at the yard-arm of a ship of a man oc- 
cupying Caracciolo's social position was wholly 
due to Lady Hamilton, for certainly merciful- 
ness and not cruelty was one of Nelson's pre- 
dominating qualities. It never will be known 
whether or not the wretched woman bore any 
part in this unfortunate business. The man 
was hanged. Did you ever see a man hanged 
at a yard-arm ? I saw a man hanged at the yard- 
arm of a gun-boat in the Bay of Pechili. I well 
remember the explosion of a single gun from 
the frigate's side, the exhibition of a black flag 
at the royal mast-head, and simultaneously the 
swaying of a figure at the gun-boat's yard-arm. 
What a ghastly pendulum ! How thankful I 



Sketches and Incidents 



159 



was when those dreadful vibrations ceased, and 
when the thing hung over the water motionless, 
suggestive, at all events, of freedom from suffer- 
ing ! Hanging is the most undignified death a 
man can die, even when he is locked up from 
the public gaze and there is nobody but sheriffs, 
warders, and reporters to stare at him. But to 
be " tucked up " at the yard-arm in the full gaze 
of the whole fleet, and within sight of a popu- 
lous shore ! The seamen crowded into the rig- 
ging of the ships to view the sight. It was 
only an Italian Prince, they said, and an Admiral 
of Naples that was hanging — a person of very 
light estimation compared to the lowest man in 
a British vessel ! ^ 

An extraordinary incident in connection with 
this execution is related by Parsons. Whilst 
the " Foudroyant " was in the bay the King 
went on board of her ; with him were his Prime 
Minister, Sir John Acton, and some foreign 
ambassadors. Nelson abandoned his cabin to 
the King, and slept in the first lieutenant's. A 
crowd of cooks accompanied the King, and Par- 
sons declares that never did the midshipmen 
fare so sumptuously as during the King's long 
stay on board the ship. Some days after the 
execution of Caracciolo, Parsons was roused with 

1 Parsons. 



i6o Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

the information that the King was on deck. 
He does not explain the duty that obhged him 
to attend the King. He cursed him for his bad 
taste in rising so early, and hurrying up found 
his Majesty gazing through a spy-glass at some 
object in the water. Suddenly the King turned 
pale and let the glass fall to the deck with an 
exclamation of horror. On the port quarter of 
the ship, easily visible to a man with good sight, 
floated the body of Caracciolo : his face was dis- 
torted by strangulation, his eyes were starting 
from their sockets, the skin of his face was whit- 
ened into a look of putrefaction by the action 
of the brine. The easy superstition of the 
Italian leaped in terror at that tremendous pic- 
ture on the port quarter. A number of priests 
were on board, and they were sent for. What 
could they tell the King to soothe his perturbed 
spirit ? One of them suggested that the soul 
of the hanged man could not rest without his 
Majesty's forgiveness, and this the body had 
risen to implore. Nelson, coming on deck, put 
an end to the joke by ordering a boat to tow 
the corpse on shore. Whether true or not, this 
story, as related by Brenton, Parsons, and others, 
most certainly lingers as a tradition. 

Nelson was immensely gratified by the cap- 
ture of the two great line-of-battle ships which 



Sketches and Incidents i6i 

had escaped at the Battle of the Nile. He was 
on board the " Foudroyant " when the " Gene- 
reux " was taken. A lively account is given by 
Parsons of the chase of this French seventy- 
four. The deck is hailed from aloft, and a 
man-of-war reported. She is a line-of-battle 
ship going large on the starboard tack ; that 
is, with the weather clew of her mainsail hauled 
up. " Clearly an enemy, Mr. Staines," says 
Nelson. " Pray God it may be ' Le Genereux.' 
Make a signal for a general chase. Sir Ed'ard." 
This is addressed to Captain Sir Edwards Berry. 
The " Northumberland," which was in com- 
pany, was taking the lead, and Nelson began to 
fume. " This won't do. Sir Ed'ard. She is 
certainly the 'Genereux,' and must surrender 
only to my flag-ship. Sir Ed'ard, we must beat 
the * Northumberland.' " On which Captain 
Berry gives the following orders : " Get the en- 
gine to work on the sails — hang butts of water 
to the stays — pipe the hammocks down, and 
each man place shot in them — slack the stays, 
knock up the wedges, and give the masts play 
— start off the water, Mr. James, and pump the 
ship." Nelson finds the vessel slightly off her 
course, and rounds furiously upon the quarter- 
master at the wheel. " I '11 knock you off your 
perch, you rascal, if you are so inattentive ! Sir 



1 62 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Ed'ard, send your best quartermaster to the 
weather-wheel." Then from on high floats 
down the voice of a seaman on the look-out : 
" A strange sail ahead of the chase." " Aloft 
with you, youngster," cried Nelson. " What ! 
Going without your glass, and be d — d to you ! 
Let me know what she is immediately." The 
signal midshipman in the cross-trees bawls down, 
" A sloop of war, or frigate, my Lord." She 
proves to be the " Success," with the gallant Cap- 
tain Peard in command. " Signal to cut off the 
flying enemy," cries Nelson. " Great odds, Sir 
— thirty-two small guns to eighty large ones." 
Nevertheless, the plucky little frigate heaves to 
athwart the hawse of the running giantess, and 
slaps his port broadside into her. Then the 
Frenchman hoists his tricolour with the Rear- 
Admiral's flag. With incredible nimbleness the 
" Success " wears, and doses the enemy with her 
starboard guns. But now it is the Frenchman's 
turn. As she passes the " Success" she blazes her 
tremendous batteries into the little ship, and all 
expect when the smoke clears away to find 
nothing left of the frigate but a few blackened 
timbers. Instead of which out of the white 
cloud grows the gallant craft, crippled, but with 
the resolution of the bull-dog, in full pursuit of 
her gigantic opponent. " Signal for the * Success ' 



Sketches and Incidents 163 

to discontinue the action and come under my 
stern," says Nelson. " She has done well for 
her size. Try a shot from the lower deck 
at her, Sir Ed'ard." The shot flies over her. 
" Beat to quarters, and fire coolly and deliber- 
ately at her masts and yards." Just then a ball 
from the enemy pierced the mizzen-staysail. 
Nelson, patting a little midshipman on the head, 
asks him with a smile how he likes that music .? 
The boy is pale and frightened. Nelson, notic- 
ing this, exclaims : " D' ye know that Charles 
XII. ran away from the first shot he heard, 
though he was afterwards called ' The Great ' 
because of his bravery ? I therefore hope much 
from you in future." Shortly after this the 
Frenchman hauled down his colours. 

Dramatic glimpses of this sort give us a 
clearer conception of the man than the most 
laboured periods of the insipid naval writer. 
We do not choose to think of Nelson always as 
nothing but a figure in a cocked hat and one 
arm, who shouts : " Glorious Victory or West- 
minster Abbey ! " and who paces the quarter- 
deck amid the thunder of guns, the yells of 
men, and the enveloping shrouds of powder- 
smoke. One wants to know the inner life of 
the man, what he ate and drank, how he was 
lodged on board ship, what sort of talker he was, 



1 64 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

what sort of host. Miss Knight admits us to a 
peep while Nelson was still in the " Foudroy- 
ant." His cabin was decorated with a piece of 
timber carved into grotesque resemblance of an 
immense three-coloured plume of feathers. This 
had been a portion of the figurehead of the 
" Guillaume Tell." The cabin wall was graced 
by four muskets which had been taken from the 
" San Josef" in the battle of St. Vincent. Like- 
wise in this cabin, as an ornament and a trophy, 
was the flagstaff of the " Orient." It does not 
seem that Nelson found these unwieldy memo- 
rials inconvenient in a small cabin. For some 
time his living-room had been enriched by a 
cofiin presented to him by Captain Hallowell, 
who had caused the ghastly gift to be fashioned 
out of a part of one of the "Orient's " masts. 
He was very proud of this coffin. It was placed 
upright, with the lid against the cabin bulkhead, 
in the wake of his chair which he used at dinner; 
and one day, observing some officers staring at 
it, he exclaimed : " You may look at it, gentle- 
men, as long as you please ; but depend upon 
it, none of you shall have it." Tom Allen, his 
servant, ultimately persuaded him to allow the 
unpleasant object to be taken and left to lie 
below. The remains of Nelson repose in that 
coffin under the dome of St. Paul's. 



Sketches and Incidents 165 

He kept a hospitable table. There was plenty 
without ostentation. His appetite at this time 
(1799) was small. Often the wing of a fowl and 
a glass or two of champagne sufficed him. His 
smile was sudden and sweet, but the habitual 
cast of his countenance was one of anxiety that 
was not wanting in a character of moodiness. 
His health was very poor ; the wound he had 
received in the head had developed or accentu- 
ated a latent quality of irritability, and we need 
not doubt that his conscience was harassed by 
thoughts of his wife, and by his relations with 
Lady Hamilton. But he had a very loving and 
bountiful heart. He wrote in July to his wife 
to request that two thousand pounds of the 
money voted to him by the East India Company 
should be divided among his father, his brother- 
in-law, and two brothers. " And," he adds, " if 
you think my sister Matcham would be gratified 
by it, do the same for her. If I were rich I 
would do more, but it will very soon be known 
how poor I am." And in August he tells his 
father that the King of Naples having made 
him a Duke by the title of Bronte, to which is 
attached a feud of about three thousand a year, 
the money should first go to him, and in succes- 
sion to his elder brother, and so on. " For 
your natural life," he continues, " the estate shall 



1 66 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

be taxed with five hundred a year." If Nelson 
was not a good husband, he was assuredly a 
devoted son and a loyal brother. 

The Italians continued to buffoon it and 
befiddle it in honour of the hero of the Nile. In 
August he wrote to his wife with boyish delight 
about one of these gingerbread celebrations. 
First of all the King of Naples dined with him, 
and when his Majesty lifted his glass to drink 
to the hero of the day, by preconcerted signal a 
royal salute of twenty-one guns was fired from 
the Sicilian ships of war and from the castles. 
When the evening descended the Bay of Naples 
was covered with festive lights, and music swept 
like the breath of flowers in gushes of fragrance 
upon the fitful wind over the placid waters. An 
example of the representations was a large vessel 
fitted out like a Roman galley. Lamps were 
fixed to its oars, in the centre stood a rostral 
column with the name of Nelson upon it, and 
at the stern were two angels holding a picture of 
Nelson. He declares to his wife that "the 
beauty of the whole is beyond my powers of 
description." The vessel was covered with up- 
wards of two thousand variegated lamps. She 
carried a number of musicians and singers who 
sang a composition of which the burden was, 
" But Nelson came, the invincible Nelson, and 



Sketches and Incidents 167 

they were preserved and again made happy." 
This, together with the friendship of the King 
and Queen, the blandishments of Lady Hamil- 
ton, not to mention the sense of his own achieve- 
ments, was quite enough to capsize the moral 
equilibrium of a less vain man than Nelson. 

This year he resigned his command to Trou- 
bridge, and returned to Palermo. The Queen 
was proceeding to Vienna, and Nelson accom- 
panied her on his way home. But before they 
left an insurrection broke out. The French 
army was about seventy miles distant, and 
the populace sought to detain the King and 
Queen and to induce Nelson to lead them 
against the detested enemy. The Queen was 
no Boadicea. She sneaked out of her palace, 
and got on board the "Alexander," to which 
ship Nelson had transferred his flag from the 
" Foudroyant." It was Nelson's purpose to 
convey the Queen to Trieste ; she travelled in 
state to Florence and Ancona, and next day 
Nelson, Sir William and Lady Hamilton, and 
Miss Knight followed her. They had embarked 
on a very perilous journey. Their road carried 
them close to the advanced posts of the French. 
Miss Knight declares that Nelson disliked this 
expedition, and undertook it against his own 
convictions that he might keep his promise 



1 68 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

to the Queen. Sir William Hamilton was 
extremely ill, and was convinced he should die 
by the way. At Castel San Giovanni the coach 
in which Nelson and his friends were seated was 
upset, and the Hamiltons were hurt, but not 
seriously. The wheel was mended, but broke 
down again. 

It was a true sailor's journey. The French 
army was behind them, and they got news of its 
rapid approach. Ancona was finally reached, 
where they found a Russian squadron about to 
sail to Corfu. An Austrian frigate named the 
" Bellona" had been fitted up for the Queen with 
silk hangings, carpets, and eighty beds. But 
she learnt that there had been a mutiny on 
board the " Bellona," and she chose to sail with 
the Russians. It was a lucky choice, for they 
afterwards learnt that the imperial frigate had been 
captured by eight vessels armed for this purpose 
by the French. The Nelson party suffered 
miserably on board the Russian Commodore's 
ship. The Commodore, who was a Dalmatian, 
lay ill in his cot, and his first lieutenant, a Nea- 
politan, was not only insolent as a man but 
ignorant as a seaman. Nelson declared that a 
gale of wind would have sunk the ship. At 
every place they arrived at crowds assembled to 
view the hero of the Nile. Vienna was filled 



Sketches and Incidents "* 169 

with signboards bearing his name, and the dress- 
makers gave his name to their latest fashions. 
It is interesting to learn that Nelson in this 
journey met and conversed with the great musi- 
cian Haydn. At the table of Prince Esterhazy 
he and the other guests were waited upon by a 
hundred Grenadiers, most of them over six feet. 
Count Batthyany regaled him with an aquatic 
fete on the Danube, and he witnessed experi- 
ments with vessels built to resist the torrents of 
the river.^ At Prague the hotel at which Nelson 
stopped was splendidly illuminated, and when 
the proprietor sent in the bill it was found that 
he had charged for every candle. At Hamburg 
Nelson lost a large diamond out of his sword. 
The merchants desired to replace it at a cost of 
eight hundred pounds, but the offer was de- 
clined. Here he met Klopstock, whom Cole- 
ridge termed, when somebody exclaimed that he 
was like Milton, " A German Milton." Here, 
too. Nelson met General Dumouriez. They 
took a liking to one another, and Nelson saw 
much of the General while at Hamburg. Du- 
mouriez at that time supported himself by his 
writings, and Nelson forced him to accept a 
hundred pounds, saying : " You 've used your 
sword too well to live only by your pen." 

^ J. C. JeafFreson. 



1 70 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

A curious story is told by Southey in relation 
to Nelson's visit to Klopstock. While the 
Admiral was with the German Milton, a grave- 
looking man, dressed as though for officiating in 
the pulpit, was shown in. He carried a Bible in 
his hand, and viewing Lord Nelson earnestly, 
said that he had travelled forty miles with a 
Bible of his parish church to request that Nel- 
son would write his name on the first leaf of it. 
Of course Nelson complied, and the parson 
blessed him and withdrew. 

Mrs. Trench when Mrs. St. George, a most 
lovely, refined, and sweet woman by her portrait, 
met the Nelson party in Germany towards the 
close of the year 1799 and gives certain racy de- 
scriptions of Lady Hamilton which are scarcely 
short of libellous. The following extracts will 
present some idea of the diarist's kindness : — 

"October 3. — Dined at Mr. Elliot's with 
only the Nelson party. It is plain that Lord 
Nelson thinks of nothing but Lady Hamilton 
who is totally occupied by the same object. She 
is bold, forward, coarse, assuming and vain. 
Her figure is colossal, but excepting her feet, 
which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are 
large, and she is exceedingly embonpoint. She 
resembles the bust of Ariadne ; the shape of all 
her features is fine, as is the form of her head, 



Sketches and Incidents 171 

and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little 
irregular, but tolerably white : her eyes light 
blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though 
a defect, takes nothing away from her beauty and 
expression : her eyebrows and hair are dark, 
and her complexion coarse : her expression is 
strongly marked, variable and interesting ; her 
movements in common life, ungraceful ; her 
voice loud, yet not disagreeable. Lord Nelson 
is a little man, without any dignity. Sir Wil- 
liam is old, infirm, all admiration of his wife, 
and never spoke to-day but to applaud her. 
Miss Cornelia Knight seems the decided flat- 
terer of the two, and never opens her mouth 
but to show forth their praise ; and Mrs. Cado- 
gan, Lady Hamilton's mother, is what one 
might expect. After dinner we had several 
songs in honour of Lord Nelson, written by 
Miss Knight, and sung by Lady Hamilton. 
She puffs the incense full in his face ; but he 
receives it with pleasure, and snuffs it up very 
cordially. The songs all ended in the sailor's 
way with ' Hip, hip, hip, hurrah ! ' —and a bum- 
per with the last drop on the nail, a ceremony I 
had never heard of or seen before. 

" October 5. — Went by Lady Hamilton's in- 
vitation to see Lord Nelson dressed for court. 
On his hat he wore the large diamond feather, 



172 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

or ensign of sovereignty given him by the Grand 
Signlor ; on his breast the Order of the Bath, 
the Order he received as Duke of Bronte, the 
diamond star, including the sun or crescent 
given him by the Grand Signior, three gold 
medals obtained by three different victories, and 
a beautiful present, richly set and surrounded 
with laurels, which spring from two united an- 
chors at bottom, and support the Neapolitan 
crown at top ; on the other is the Queen's 
cypher, which turns so as to appear within the 
same laurel, and is formed of diamonds on green 
enamel. In short. Lord Nelson was a perfect 
constellation of stars and orders. 

" October 7. — Breakfasted with Lady Ham- 
ilton, and saw her represent in succession the 
best statues and paintings extant. She assumes 
their attitude, expression, and drapery with great 
facility, swiftness, and accuracy. It is remark- 
able that though coarse and ungraceful in com- 
mon life, she becomes highly graceful, and even 
beautiful, during this performance. It is also 
singular that, in spite of the accuracy of her 
imitation of the finest ancient draperies, her 
usual dress is tasteless, vulgar, loaded, and un- 
becoming. She has borrowed several of my 
gowns, and much admired my dress, which can- 
not flatter, as her own is so frightful. Her waist 



Sketches and Incidents 



173 



is absolutely between her shoulders. After 
showing her attitudes, she sung, and I accom- 
panied. Her voice is good, and very strong, 
but she is frequently out of tune: her expression 
strongly marked and various ; and she has no 
shake, no flexibility, and no sweetness. She acts 
her songs, which I think the last degree of bad 
taste. 

"October 9. — A great breakfast at the Elliot's 
given to the Nelson party. All the company, ex- 
cept their party and myself, went away before din- 
ner ; after which Lady Hamilton, who declared 
she was passionately fond of champagne, took 
such a portion of it as astonished me. Lord 
Nelson was not behindhand, called more vocif- 
erously than usual for songs in his own praise, 
and after many bumpers proposed the Queen of 
Naples, adding, ' She is my queen; she is queen 
to the backbone.' Sir William also this even- 
ing performed feats of activity, hopping round 
the room on his backbone, his arms, legs, stars, 
and ribbon all flying about in the air." 

The Nelson party sailed on October 31st, in 
the " King George " mail packet, and landed at 
Great Yarmouth on November 6. Those were 
the ambling days of the sea. A week from 
Hamburg to Great Yarmouth ! But indeed 
the voyage might have been protracted indefi- 



1 74 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

nitely, for the vessel had barely crossed the bar 
when it came on to blow an ofF-shore gale which 
otherwise would have sent her scudding away to 
sea with the velocity of a floating balloon. As 
it was the weather was so heavy that nothing 
but the resolved spirit of Nelson could have in- 
duced the pilot to make the attempt to land. 
A strong glass of grog helped him to see things 
from Nelson's point of view, and they all some- 
how got ashore. A carriage was in waiting on 
the beach. The horses were taken from it, and 
a crowd, cheering at the top of their voices, 
dragged Nelson and his friends to the Wrestlers' 
Inn. The harbour was gay with flags. " The 
Conquering Hero " was played by bands of 
music, and troops paraded before the inn. He 
marched in solemn procession with the corpora- 
tion to church to thank God for his preservation 
and his restoration to his country. Many have 
wondered that Lady Nelson did not meet him. 
But of course she knew he was with the Hamil- 
tons. If Nelson could feel as a man, his wife, 
too, must be allowed to feel as a woman. Yet 
I confess the situation is one extremely hard to 
explain. Down to this hour he was speaking of 
his wife aff'ectionately. Whilst he was at Leg- 
horn he expressed the hope that Lady Nelson 
and himself would be much with Sir William and 



Sketches and Incidents 175 

Lady Hamilton, and that they would all very 
often dine together, and that when the Hamil- 
tons went to their musical parties he and Lady 
Nelson would go to bed. At Hamburg just 
before sailing for England he purchased a mag- 
nificent lace trimming for a Court dress for 
Lady Nelson, and a black lace cloak for another 
lady, who he said had been very attentive to his 
wife during his absence. It is also remembered 
that after Aboukir some one said to him that 
doubtless the ist of August was the happiest 
day of his life. He answered, " No/' The 
happiest day of his life was the day on which he 
married his wife. 

The party went to London, and on their 
arrival in town. Sir William and Lady Hamilton 
went with Nelson to dine with his father and 
Lady Nelson. What reception did the Rev- 
erend Edmund vouchsafe the divine Emma.^* 
A better reception, depend upon it, than Nelson 
got at the hands of his sovereign. CoUingwood, 
writing under date Jan. 25, 1801, says: "Lord 
Nelson is here. . . . He gave me an account of 
his reception at Court which was not very flat- 
tering after having been the adoration of that of 
Naples. His Majesty merely asked him if he 
had recovered his health, and then, without 
waiting for an answer, turned to General 



176 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

and talked to him near half an hour in great 
good humour. It could not be about his ' suc- 
cesses.' " In this manner was the hero of the 
Nile received by King George III. Yet it 
must be said that that old King, whether crazy 
or not, was a great stickler for the proprieties. 
He objected to the King of Denmark giving a 
masked ball when in this country, and never 
himself countenanced that diversion, popular as it 
was, because he considered it a vicious form of 
entertainment. Such a man would make haste 
to find something very objectionable in the 
Hamilton scandal. But then the respectable 
old gentleman should not have forgotten that in 
receiving Nelson he was in the presence of the 
greatest hero in British history, a man who 
was making his sovereign's reign more illus- 
trious than any in the annals, not excepting 
Elizabeth's. 

Now that Lady Hamilton was in town the 
life led by Nelson and his wife grew insupport- 
able to both. They lived together very unhap- 
pily for about two months, and then happened 
what the ladies call a " scene." It may be read 
in Nicolas and a dozen lives of Nelson. They 
were at breakfast at their lodgings in Arlington 
Street when, in the course of conversation, Nel- 
son referred to something which had been said 



Sketches and Incidents 177 

or done by " dear Lady Hamilton." Lady 
Nelson started up and exclaimed with some 
heat — "I am sick of hearing of dear Lady 
Hamilton, and am resolved that you shall give 
up either her or me." Nelson answered : "Take 
care, Fanny, what you say. I love you sin- 
cerely, but I cannot forget my obligations to 
Lady Hamilton, or speak of her otherwise than 
with affectionate admiration." Lady Nelson said 
that her mind was made up, left the room, and 
shortly after drove from the house. It ended 
in a separation. 

Miss Knight, in referring to this period, says : 
" I dined one day with Sir William and Lady 
Hamilton in Grosvenor Square. Lord and 
Lady Nelson were of the party, and the Duke 
of Sussex and Lady Augusta Murray came in 
the evening. Lord Nelson was to make his 
appearance at the theatre next day, but I de- 
clined to go with the party. I afterwards heard 
that Lady Nelson fainted in the box. ... So 
much was said about the attachment of Lord 
Nelson to Lady Hamilton that it made the 
matter still worse. He felt irritated, and took 
it up in an unfortunate manner by devoting 
himself more to her, for the purpose of what 
he called supporting her." Miss Knight tells 
us that she was obliged to cut the party. The 



178 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

idea of this poor sycophantic old maid cutting 
Nelson is one to muse upon. 

It is strange to observe how the unfortunate 
Emma mingles herself with the life of Nelson. 
The student cannot get away from her. She is 
as a strand in the rope of his career, and makes 
herself as much a portion of his later life as if 
she had been a ship or a battle. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE BALTIC 



ON January i, 1801, in a general promo- 
tion of Admirals, Lord Nelson was made 
Vice-Admiral of the Blue, and some days later 
hoisted his flag in the " San Josef" at Plymouth, 
his favourite Hardy being his captain. He took 
his final leave of Lady Nelson on the 13th, and 
on quitting her exclaimed : " I call God to wit- 
ness, there is nothing in you or your conduct I 
wish otherwise." The last letter he ever wrote 
to her is dated at Southampton on the day of 
his departure from London : " My dear Fanny, 
— We are arrived, and heartily tired; and with 
kindest regards to my father and all the family, 
believe me, your affectionate Nelson." 

In consequence of the Northern Coalition, 
the British Government resolved to send a pow- 
erful fleet into the Baltic under Admiral Sir 
Hyde Parker,^ with Lord Nelson as second in 
command. The Northern Coalition signified a 

^ Hyde Parker's name survives in Lieutenant Archer's account 
of a storm in which Parker showed great spirit. 



i8o Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

treaty by which Russia, Sweden, and Denmark 
bound themselves to resist the right claimed by 
the enemy of searching their merchant vessels. 
Trouble had arisen in the previous July. A 
British squadron had fallen in with a Danish 
forty-gun frigate convoying two ships. The 
Dane was hailed by the senior British officer, 
who said that he should send his boat on board 
the convoy to search the ships for contraband 
of war. An action followed, and the Danish 
frigate and her convoy were brought into the 
Downs. Lord Whitworth was at once de- 
spatched to the Court of Denmark to adjust, if 
he could, the very grave difficulty which had 
arisen. Russia professed to resent the attack 
upon the Danish frigate, and to take offence at 
the passage through the Sound of the ships that 
had accompanied Lord Whitworth. The Em- 
peror of Russia was Paul the Brutal — a mad- 
man. His first act was to sequester all British 
property in his dominions ; then, made raving 
by news of the capture of Malta and the hoist- 
ing of the English flag alone upon it, he laid an 
embargo on all the British shipping in his ports, 
and, says Brenton, some two thousand seamen 
were marched away in the dead of winter to dif- 
ferent villages and towns in the interior. The 
armed neutrality between Russia and Sweden was 



The Baltic 1 8 1 

then strengthened by the junction of Denmark, 
and the issue of this confederation was the Battle 
of Copenhagen. 

Nelson arrived at Spithead on the 2ist of 
February, and on the 26th embarked six hun- 
dred troops under Colonel Stewart. Immedi- 
ately the Colonel arrived Nelson sent for him. 
He said, " Not a moment is to be lost in em- 
barking the troops, as I intend to sail next tide." 
All the soldiers were on board before midday. 
No man better knew the value of time. Once, 
in conversing with General Twiss, Nelson said, 
"Time, Twiss, time — time is everything; five 
minutes makes the difference between a victory 
and a defeat." On the 2d of March he sailed 
in the " St. George " from Portsmouth, with 
seven sail of the line, frigates, and small vessels, 
to join Sir Hyde Parker's squadron at Yarmouth. 
When the " St. George " was off Dungeness the 
wind scanted, and it was necessary to 'bout ship. 
Nelson himself gave the orders, and the ship 
missed stays, — that is to say, instead of coming 
round on the other tack, she remained flat aback, 
— " in irons," as Jack calls it. It will not be 
supposed that Nelson much relished his own 
imagination of what his men would think of this 
stroke of seamanship. Obviously, however, in 
proportion as the wind is light, so is it difficult 



1 82 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

to tack. You keep your ship " full for stays," 
and then, when your helm is down, the rushing 
vessel sweeps with the velocity of knots into 
the wind's eye, and it is " let go and haul " very 
swiftly and very certainly. But a ship moving 
sluggishly through the water responds sulkily 
to her helm. In those days vessels had not 
very much more length than they had breadth, 
and how they were worked against a head wind 
and head sea except by wearing, which would 
be absurd and useless if distance was to be cov- 
ered, one feels puzzled to understand. 

Colonel Stewart tells us that while the " St. 
George " was all aback Nelson said peevishly to 
one of the officers, " Well, now, see what we 
have done. Well, Sir, what mean you to do 
now ? " The other answered, " I don't exactly 
know, my Lord; I fear she won't do." Nelson 
turned abruptly towards the cabin door, exclaim- 
ing, "Well, I am sure if you do not know what 
to do with her, no more do I either," and so say- 
ing he went in. Yet he was very angry when 
the " Warrior," one of the ships of his squad- 
ron, touched on the Goodwins, albeit she got 
off without damage. 

The ships brought up in the Downs, and 
Nelson went ashore at Deal on a visit to his 
old friend Admiral Lutwidge. After the battle 



The Baltic 183 

of the Baltic, he saw more of Deal than pleased 
him. Yet I am fond of associating Nelson with 
that old town. Our leagues of foreshore sub- 
mit nothing Salter than Deal. The breaker 
sweats in foam upon the shingle. A mile of 
seaboard is filled with public-houses. You fall 
over anchors and chains, and if you are not 
careful you will be wound up along with the 
galley-punt in the lean bars of the leaner cap- 
stan against which venerable men in tall bronzed 
hats and white hair, and against which a younger 
set of fellows in jerseys, monotonously, press, 
tramping songless round and round the shingle. 
On Nelson's arrival in Yarmouth Roads with 
his ships, he reported himself to Sir Hyde Parker, 
who was on shore, and next morning, after break- 
fasting soon after six o'clock, for he was always 
up before daylight, he and Colonel Stewart went 
on shore, and at eight o'clock, which Nelson 
considered late for business, knocked upon Sir 
Hyde's door. Nelson's scheme of war lay very 
perfect in his head. His active mind abhorred 
procrastination. His plan was at once to pro- 
ceed to Copenhagen with such ships as he could 
assemble, and there and then to insist on peace 
or war. With characteristic eagerness he wanted 
to be " at 'em." While at Yarmouth he wrote 
to Sir Edward Berry : " I hope we shall be able. 



184 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

as usual, to get so close to our enemies that our 
shot cannot miss their object, and that we shall 
again give our Northern enemies that hailstorm 
of bullets which is so emphatically described in 
the * Naval Chronicle,' and which gives our dear 
country the dominion of the seas. We have it, 
and all the devils in Hell cannot take it from 
us, if our wooden walls have fair play." To Sir 
Hyde himself he submitted a masterly plan of 
attack ; and referring to the passage of the Belt, 
and the detachment of ten ships of three and 
two decks to destroy the Russian squadron at 
Revel, he says, " The measure may be thought 
bold, but I am of opinion the boldest measures 
are the safest." Certainly, by rapidity of action 
he would have anticipated the Danes in the for- 
midable reception they were preparing to give 
the British. He chafed over the delay in Yar- 
mouth Roads ; then came an Admiralty order, 
and the fleet put to sea. 

The weather was heavy, — it usually is in 
the North Sea in the spring of the year. The 
" Invincible," seventy-four guns. Rear- Admiral 
Totty, went ashore and was lost. Disturbing 
accounts of the Danish defences had been re- 
ceived, and the information he had got from 
Mr. Vansittart and the North Sea pilots in the 
fleet induced Sir Hyde to choose the circuitous 



The Baltic 185 

passage of the Great Belt. Nelson, who was all 
impatience, exclaimed, " Let it be by the Sound, 
by the Belt, or anyhow, only lose not an hour." 
Captain Otway succeeded in convincing Sir Hyde 
Parker that the Sound was the best route. The 
fleet was hove to that Nelson might be apprised 
of the reason of the change. " I don't care a 
damn by which passage we go so that we fight 
them," was Nelson's answer to Otway. 

After delays which provided the Danes with 
ample time for rendering (as they might hope) 
their position impregnable, the British fleet made 
sail off Elsinore. The coast there is semicircu- 
lar, and it was crowded with batteries. The 
English ships as they passed curved into a pic- 
ture of beauty. Colonel Stewart speaks of the 
form as " truly picturesque." Finding the Swed- 
ish side silent, the fleet inclined towards that 
shore. The Danish batteries opened fire. The 
foreshore was red with the flames of guns. 
Every shot, however, fell short, much to the 
diversion of the British crews, not a man among 
whom was hit. A few of our leading ships fired 
a round or two in return, then wisely saved their 
powder, and the whole company of stately ves- 
sels floated onwards, with the lounging Jacks 
watching the " bally Scandyhoovians " futilely 
firing ashore. 



1 86 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

The fleet then came to anchor, and Lord 
Nelson with others went in a schooner to recon- 
noitre the harbour and channels. It was quickly 
perceived that the delay of the British to attack 
had been made all possible use of by the Danes. 
Along the northern edge of the shoals, by the 
Crown batteries, and in front of the harbour and 
arsenal, was moored a line of floating batteries, 
pontoons, frigate-hulks, gun-boats, every one 
of them bristling with guns. The Trekroner 
battery had been strengthened, and the buoys 
which marked the navigation of the channels 
had been removed. The Danes are reluctant 
to admit that Copenhagen was a British victory, 
but they will not deny that their genius as sea- 
men rendered the British attack so formidable 
and perilous that, considering we had nothing 
but the fickle wind to depend upon, it is nothing 
short of marvellous that our ships should have 
made the passage, should have survived the 
deadly intricacies of the navigation, and should 
have placed themselves alongside the Danes' 
stationary hulks with scarcely less ease than had 
they been propelled by screws. 

The Danish line of defence was four miles 
long. Its approach was protected by shoals. 
Seventy guns were counted upon the Trekroner 
battery. Of the defences, five were the hulks 



The Baltic 187 

of men-of-war, and two were full-rigged line-of- 
battle ships. And off the harbour's mouth were 
moored four line-of-battle ships and a frigate, 
and the frigate and the two liners had all yards 
across. 

Nelson attended a council of war. How was 
the attack to be delivered ? He offered his ser- 
vices, and asked for ten line-of-battle ships and 
the whole of the smaller craft. Parker gave 
him two more line-of-battle ships than he de- 
manded. During the council Stewart tells us 
that some of the members imagined certain 
difficulties in relation to the three Powers which 
the British were to fight in succession or all at 
once. Somebody represented the Russians as 
very formidable. Nelson paced the deck with 
disgust and wrath. When the Swedes were re- 
ferred to as powerful and dangerous, he rounded 
sharply upon the speaker and said, " The more 
numerous the better." And when the same 
observation was applied to the Russians, he 
said, and repeated as often as the remark was 
made, " So much the better ! I wish there 
were twice as many ; the easier the victory, 
depend on it." He afterwards said that by 
this he referred to the want of tactical knowl- 
edge among the Northern fleets. His scheme 
for them was the plan he had employed at 



1 88 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Aboukir, and afterwards at Trafalgar. It was 
his intention, he said, whenever he should bring 
the Swedes or Russians to action, to attack their 
van, and so win the battle before the leeward- 
most of their line could come to the rescue of 
their comrades. He used to say, " Close with a 
Frenchman, but outmanoeuvre a Russian." 

It is told, though not confirmed by his later 
biographers, that on the night of the day of this 
council of war, Nelson in a boat personally di- 
rected the all-important service of ascertaining 
the course of the upper channel. His devotion 
was marvellous, and beautiful, and touching. 
Let us remember his health, the delicacy of his 
constitution, and think of the bitter cold of the 
March night upon those waters. It is idle to 
say that the mind is not governed by one's state 
of health. A man's spirit will be weakened by 
wounds and pain. Greatness of soul is propor- 
tioned to the power of dominating the weakness 
of the body and the body's appeal to that in- 
nate selfishness which is the living and active 
principle of life. Whenever occasion arose, 
Nelson's mighty mind seems to have had the 
power of dematerialising itself. He was as a 
spirit then, and heeded no more the clamours 
of his flesh than had they been the whispered 
fears of women on the eve of battle. 



The Baltic 189 

He shifted his flag from the " St. George " to 
the " Elephant," because of the latter's lighter 
draught of water. The night of the ist of 
April was dark, portentous, lowering with the 
bigness of the fate of the morrow. The whole 
fleet had anchored off Draco Point ; the head- 
most of the enemy's line floated within two 
miles. The Danes conceived their channel im- 
practicable, and contented themselves with im- 
proving their defences instead of firing upon the 
British. Through the dusk of the night upon 
the calm waters our guardboats slowly moyed in 
shadows, and Hardy, the gallant Hardy, even 
rowed to the enemy's leading ship and sounded 
round her with a pole that the dip of the lead 
might not be heard. 

Nelson gave a dinner-party that night. The 
guests comprised Foley, Hardy, Fremantle, 
Riou (" the gallant good Riou "), Admiral 
Graves, and a few others. He was in high 
spirits, and drank to a leading wind and to the 
success of the ensuing day. When the Cap- 
tains had withdrawn, Nelson was so much ex- 
hausted while dictating his instructions, that his 
servant, Tom Allen, an eccentric character of 
the Smollett school of tars, induced him to rest 
in his cot. He lay in it upon the deck, but 
continued, nevertheless, to dictate. By one 



190 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

o'clock the orders were completed, and a num- 
ber of clerks went to work to make copies of 
them. All the time these clerks were writing, 
Nelson was shouting to them to bear a hand. In 
fact, it had been reported to him that the wind 
was becoming fair. 

The ships under Nelson — twelve sail of the 
line and a large number of small vessels — got 
under way in the morning of the 2d of April ; 
but scarcely had the signals of the different 
liners been made and answered, when the " Aga- 
memnon" grounded, and shortly afterwards the 
"Russell" and " Bellona " touched and stuck. 
This was crippling the force to a degree that 
would have staggered most men. Nor was it 
the only misfortune. The "Jamaica," a frigate 
with a convoy of gun-boats and small craft, was 
swept astern by a counter current, and signalled 
her inability to proceed. Nevertheless, aboard 
the " Elephant " the signal to bear down was 
still kept flying. There is a stroke in the " Or- 
ders for the Attack " which is peculiarly illustra- 
tive of Nelson's character. He says, " Nos. i, 
2, 3, 4 being subdued, which is expected to happen 
at an early period I " Nothing but victory is 
anticipated. The inspiration of triumph makes 
every passage of the orders ring with the con- 
quering note of the bugle. And now here was 



The Baltic 191 

one of the ships, the " Agamemnon," that with 
the " Desiree " and another was to subdue Nos. 
I, 2, 3, and 4, whose rates were seventy-four 
and sixty-four, while the remainder were low 
floating batteries — here was the " Agamemnon " 
ashore ! The nine remaining ships anchored 
abreast of the Danish hulks, which bristled with 
ordnance and were crowded with men, harder to 
fight than had they been full-rigged and under 
way, for they were nothing but anchored fort- 
resses, to give and receive fires till one or the 
other should be blown to pieces. No seaman- 
ship was wanted when the anchors had been let 
go — nothing but broadside after broadside, ais 
swiftly as the guns could be made to deliver 
their deadly message. 

The Danish commander was Fischer. His 
ship was the " Dannebrog," and Nelson sta- 
tioned the " Elephant " abreast of her. There 
was uncertainty as to the depth of the water, and 
the action was undoubtedly prolonged on ac- 
count of the distance (a cable's length) at which 
the contending ships were fought. I have said 
that no seamanship was requisite after the ships 
had dropped their anchors, but till then the 
manner, the judgment with which each British 
vessel calculated her station in those dangerous 
waters, and, under ever diminishing canvas. 



192 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

sought and secured her position, was as superb 
an example of seafaring skill as may be any- 
where encountered In naval history. The battle 
was soon raging. The sheer hulks were blazing 
away with a resolution apparently invincible. 
The Danes were not Frenchmen or Spaniards. 
They made a splendid and a terrible enemy. 
Some of the decks of their ships were quickly 
filled with dead, and still fresh men came off 
from the shore and fought the guns waist-high 
among the corpses. 

Captain Riou, observing the blank caused by 
the stranding of the three British ships of war, 
attempted with his squadron of frigates to supply 
the want. His ships were saved from destruc- 
tion through the general signal of recall made by 
the Commander-in-Chief. No visible impres- 
sion had been produced upon the enemy by one 
o'clock in the afternoon. The " Provesteen's " 
fire had proved deadly to the " Isis," and she 
must have been bombarded into fragments but 
for the action of the " Desiree," by whom her 
Danish enemy was raked. The " Holstein " 
and the " Zealand " were combining their broad- 
sides in a withering fire at the " Monarch," and 
she was suffering severely. Signals of distress 
were flying - on board the " Bellona " and 
" Russell," and the signal of disablement had 



The Baltic ig^ 

been hoisted for some time on board the 
" Agamemnon." 

It was about this time that Sir Hyde Parker, 
on board his flag-ship the " London," hoisted a 
signal for the action to cease. Nelson, during 
the battle, had been walking the weatherside of 
the quarter-deck. He was often animated in his 
conversation. As Colonel Stewart walked with 
him, a shot hammered some splinters out of the 
mainmast. " It is warm work," said Nelson, 
with a smile, " and this day may be the last to 
any of us at a moment." He stopped with an 
expression which deeply impressed the memory 
of his hearer. He added, " But, mark you, I 
would not be elsewhere for thousands." The 
signal-lieutenant reported the signal flying on 
board the " London." Nelson seemed not to 
heed him. The lieutenant waited for him to 
make a fresh turn of the deck, and said, " Shall 
I repeat it, my Lord ^ " Nelson answered, 
" No ; acknowledge it." When the ofiicer ■ 
returned to the poop, Nelson said, " Is Num- 
ber 1 6 still hoisted?" — i6 signifying "For 
close action." " Yes, my Lord." " Mind you 
keep it so." The movement of the stump of 
his right arm expressed Nelson's agitation. 
Whenever he was worried or excited he worked 
his " fin," as his sailors called it. Then followed 

13 



194 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

this conversation. " Do you know," said he, 
addressing Colonel Stewart in a quick, eager 
voice, "what 's shown on board of the Com- 
mander-in-Chief? " "No," answered the Colo- 
nel. " Why, to leave off action," exclaimed 
Nelson. " Leave off action," he repeated. 
" Now, damn me if I do ! " Then, turning to 
his Captain (Foley), he exclaimed, " You know, 
Foley, I have only one eye — I have a right to 
be blind sometimes," and putting the spy-glass 
to his blind eye he exclaimed, " I really do not 
see the signal." There can be no doubt what- 
ever that this conversation took place, to the ac- 
companiment of the thunder of the contending 
batteries. But to judge by what Southey, James, 
Dr. Scott, and others affirm, it was prearranged 
between Nelson and Parker that the Com- 
mander-in-Chief should hoist the signal if he 
thought it necessary to do so, and that Nelson 
should take no notice of it if he chose to con- 
tinue the action. This being so. Nelson's talk 
and his use of the spy-glass were simply a brief 
dramatisation of the incident of the signal for 
the edification of Colonel Stewart, a soldier, 
for we are not to believe that British naval 
officers needed their spirits rallying. 

The action was at its height when the " Dan- 
nebrog" was seen to be on fire. It was also 



The Baltic i^r 

observed that she had struck, but though a boat 
was sent to take possession, the crew meanly, 
inhumanely", and contrary to the usage of nations 
and the custom of war, fired at her. Com- 
mander Commodore Fischer had quitted the 
ship. Nelson speaks in the utmost contempt 
of this man. "In his letter he states that after 
he quitted the ' Dannebrog ' she long contested 
the battle. If so, more shame for him to quit 
so many brave fellows. Here was no manceu- 
vring : it was downright fighting, and it was his 
duty to have shown an example of firmness 
becoming the high trust reposed in him. He 
went in such a hurry, if he went before she. 
struck, which but for his own declaration I can 
hardly believe, that he forgot to take his broad 
pendant with him ; for both pendant and ensign 
were struck together." 

Captain Mahan has coloured his fine paper 
in the " Century Magazine " on the battle of 
Copenhagen by extracts from the description 
of one who was a midshipman on board the 
" Monarch," which ship, says the American 
writer, lost two hundred and twenty killed and 
wounded, — exceeding any incurred either at the 
Nile or at Trafalgar. The midshipman thus 
proceeds : " Toward the close of the action the 
colonel commanding the detachment of soldiers 



1 96 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

on board told me that the quarter-deck guns 
wanted quill or tin tubes, and wanted me to send 
some one, adding, his own men were too igno- 
rant of the ship or he would have sent one of 
them, I told him I knew no one who could so 
well be spared as myself He, however, objected 
to my going, and as I was aware of the dreadful 
slaughter which had taken place in the centre of 
the ship, I was not very fond of the jaunt, but 
my conscience would not let me send any other 
on an errand I was afraid to undertake myself, 
and away I posted towards the fore-magazine. 
When I arrived on the main deck along which 
I had to pass, there was not a single man stand- 
ing the whole way from the mainmast for- 
ward, a district containing eight guns on a side, 
some of which were run out ready for firing, 
others lay dismounted, and others remained as 
they were after recoiling. ... I hastened down 
the fore-ladder to the lower deck, and felt really 
relieved to find somebody alive. I was obliged 
to wait a few minutes for my cargo, and after 
this pause I own I felt something like regret if 
not fear as I remounted the ladder on my return. 
This, however, entirely subsided when I saw the 
sun shining and the old blue ensign flying as 
lofty as ever. I never felt the genuine sense of 
glory so completely as at that moment. I took 



The Baltic 



197 



off my hat by an involuntary motion and gave 
three cheers as I jumped on to the quarter-deck. 
Colonel Hutchinson welcomed me at my quar- 
ters as if I had been on a hazardous enterprise 
and had returned in triumph ; the first lieutenant 
also expressed great satisfaction at seeing me in 
such high spirits and so active. 

" Our signal midshipman was bruised from 
head to foot with splinters in such a manner as 
compelled him to leave the deck. Mr. Le 
Vesconte, another midshipman who was my 
companion on the quarter-deck, and who was as 
cool and apparently unconcerned as usual, shared 
the same fate. I attended him to the lower 
deck, but could not prevail upon myself to set 
foot on the ladder to the cock-pit. I left him 
there to make the best of his way. As the 
splinters were so plentiful it may be wondered 
how I escaped ; the fact is I did not escape 
entirely. When the wheel was shot away I was 
in a cloud, but being some little distance before 
the wheel I did not receive any of the larger 
pieces. Our first lieutenant, Mr. Yelland, had 
taken care to have the decks swept, and every- 
thing clean and nice before we went into action. 
He had dressed himself in full uniform, with his 
cocked hat set on square, his shirt frill stiff 
starched, and his cravat tied tight under his chin 



198 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

as usual. How he escaped unhurt seems won- 
derful. Several times I lost sight of him in a 
cloud of splinters. As they subsided I saw first 
his cocked hat emerging, then, by degrees, the 
rest of his person, his face smiling, so that alto- 
gether one might imagine him dressed for his 
wedding-day." Captain Mahan justly remarks 
that " we have ordinarily too little of these small 
details in naval battles." He does not know 
that they are sternly repressed or contemptu- 
ously ignored by naval writers in this country. 
No ! It must be : " At nineteen seconds past 
one, H. M. S. * Edgar' ported her helm 
and fired a bow gun at the enemy containing 
the following charge." It is this sort of writer 
who h"as ruined naval literature in popular 
esteem. 

The " Elephant," helped by the " Glatton," 
in a quarter of an hour completely silenced the 
" Dannebrog," and when the smoke blew away 
she was seen to be in flames, drifting through 
her own line to the terror of the Danes. The 
crew were throwing themselves out of the port- 
holes, and our boats rescued many of them. 
She then blew up. Not yet was the action 
over, however, though many of the hulks and 
other vessels of the enemy had surrendered. 
But it was found that our boats when despatched 



The Baltic 199 

to take possession were fired on. Possibly this 
was due to the ignorance of the people who 
manned the hulks. It was quite plain to Nel- 
son, however, that he must either send on shore 
and stop this irregular proceeding of firing into 
the boats, or send in his fireships to burn the 
prizes. Walking aft to the rudder-head he wrote 
his celebrated letter addressed — 

** To THE Brothers of Englishmen, the Danes. 

Lord Nelson has directions to spare Denmark when 
no longer resisting. But if the firing is continued on 
the part of Denmark, Lord Nelson will be obliged to 
set on fire all the floating batteries he has taken, with- 
out having the power of saving the brave Danes who 
have defended them. Dated on board His Britannic 
Majesty's Ship " Elephant," Copenhagen Roads, April 
2nd, 1801. 

NELSON AND BRONTE, 
Vice- Admiral, Vtider the Command of Admiral Sir 
Hyde Parker.^'' 

This letter was placed in an envelope. Mr. 
Wallis, the purser of the " Elephant," was going 
to seal it with a wafer, but Nelson said no. It 
must be properly sealed with wax, otherwise 
the enemy would think it was written and 
despatched in a hurry. Wallis sent a man 
below for a light ; the poor fellow was killed on 
his way. A light was procured, and the letter 



200 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

sealed. It was then sent ashore by Captain 
Thesiger, whose knowledge of Copenhagen and 
the Danish language constituted him a very fit 
officer to be intrusted with a flag of truce. 
Wallis, in recalling this incident, speaks of Nel- 
son as dressed in a plain sort of blue greatcoat, 
epaulets, or gold lace. On his breast were his 
several orders, and he wore a plain cocked hat. 
Thus we get a picture of this wonderful little 
man standing at the rudder-head leisurely writ- 
ing and leisurely sealing a letter to the Danes. 

But the might of England flush' d 

To anticipate the scene ; 

And her van the fleeter rush'd 

O'er the deadly space between. 

" Hearts of Oak ! " our Captains cried ; when each gun 

From its adamantine lips 

Spread a death-shade round the ships 

Like the hurricane eclipse 

Of the sun. 

Again ! again ! again ! 

And the havoc did not slack. 

Till a feeble cheer the Dane 

To our cheering sent us back. 

Their shots along the deep slowly boom. 

Then ceased, and all is wail 

As they strike the shatter' d sail. 

Or in conflagration pale 

Light the gloom. 



The Baltic 201 

While the boat bearing the flag of truce was ab- 
sent, the ships of the enemy's line to the eastward 
of the Trekroner struck. Some time after three 
o'clock Lindholm, returning with the flag of truce, 
ordered the Crown Battery to cease firing, and 
one of the bloodiest and fiercest actions recorded 
in the history of slaughter came to an end after 
the duration of about five hours. The Prince 
of Denmark's letter asked Lord Nelson for his 
reasons for sending his message. The answer 
was that the British Admiral acted only in the 
interests of humanity. This has been unfairly 
questioned by certain Danish writers, who seem 
to forget that Lindholm expressly wrote to^ 
Nelson that, " As to your Lordship's motives 
for sending a flag of truce to our Government, 
it can never be misconstrued, and your subse- 
quent conduct has sufficiently shown that hu- 
manity is always the companion of true valour." 
There can be no doubt that Nelson was correct 
in stating that the Danish line of defence to the 
southward of the Crown Islands was much 
stronger and more numerous than the British. 
We had only five sail of seventy-fours, two 
sixty-fours, two fifties, and one frigate engaged. 
Seven shells were thrown into the Arsenal by 
a bomb-vessel. Niebuhr, the historian, who was 
in Copenhagen during the battle, says that 



202 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Nelson's conduct was absurdly undignified, and 
that the English ships of the line struck but 
could not be taken. He also says that we 
burnt a number of our own disabled ships, and 
owned in killed and wounded to two thousand 
men. Is Niebuhr read in this age ? It may be 
supposed that he was in a cellar out of harm's 
way, or at a safe distance from shell and cannon- 
ball under some suburban roof; thus situated 
he would catch the flying rumours as they 
passed and make notes and history of them. 

To provide against a renewal of hostilities 
the British fleet weighed anchor in succession. 
The " Monarch " grounded, but the " Ganges," 
by fouling, floated her. The "Defiance" and 
" Elephant " went ashore and stuck. The " Ele- 
phant" floated at eight that night, but Nelson, 
after visiting the " London," repaired on board 
the " St. George." 

Here is presented a curious picture. The 
night has come down upon the waters, but all 
is hushed ; the stillness is accentuated by mem- 
ory of the thunders of the day ; the wet lips of 
the brine sip the dusky sides of the motionless 
man-of-war, looming her lofty heights into 
shadow. Nelson sits in the cabin of the " St. 
George." He is alone, and writing a letter to 
Lady Hamilton. " My dearest friend," he 



The Baltic 



203 



says, "that same Deity who has on so many 
occasions protected Nelson has once more 
crowned his endeavours with complete success." 
He writes more to the same effect, then shifts 
his helm for a poetical cruise. Whether they 
are his own or the lines of somebody else I do 
not know ; they are certainly indifferent enough 
to be Nelson's, whose flights of fancy make on 
the whole but an ill figure, though in senten- 
tious utterance and in the capacity of deliver- 
ing a weighty sentiment in terse and memorable 
form, few were his equals. These are the 
lines : — 

LORD NELSON TO HIS GUARDIAN ANGEL. 

From my best cable tho' I 'm forced to part, 
I leave my Anchor in my Angel's heart; 
Love, hke a pilot, shall the pledge defend. 
And for a prong his happiest quiver lend. 

ANSWER OF LORD NELSON'S GUARDIAN 
ANGEL. 

Go where you list, each thought of Angel's (Emma) soul 

Shall follow you from Indus to the Pole ; 

East, west, north, south, our minds shall never part. 

Your Angel's loadstone shall be Nelson's heart. 

Farewell, and o'er the wide, wide sea 

Bright glory's course pursue. 

And adverse winds to love and me 

Prove fair to fame and you : 



204 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

And when the dreaded hour of battle 's nigh 
Your Angel's heart, which trembles at a sigh. 
By your superior danger bolder grown. 
Shall dauntless place itself before your own, 
Happy, thrice happy, should her fond heart prove 
A shield to Valour, Constancy, and Love. 



cc c 



Sl George,' April 2nd, 1801, g o'clock at 
night. Very tired after a hard-fought battled 



CHAPTER IX 



ALL IN THE DOWNS 



IT was scarcely daybreak, and a bitterly cold 
morning. Nelson's ship, the " Elephant," 
had been ashore. The lookout saw a boat com- 
ing through the shadow, and as the dawn bright- 
ened she was discovered to be the gig of the 
" Elephant," with Lord Nelson in the stern 
sheets. In her he had repaired on board the 
"St. George," and believing the "Elephant" 
was still aground, had rejoined her. 

His thoughts had been with his ship in which 
he had fought the Battle of the Baltic, and he 
was overjoyed at finding her afloat. He break- 
fasted in a hurry, and then took boat for a view 
of the prizes. A curious story is told by 
Brenton. One of the hne-of-battle ships, the 
" Holstein," lying under the protection of the 
guns of the " Trekroner," had struck, but re- 
fused to acknowledge herself captured. An- 
other ship, the " Zealand," had also struck, and 
about the surrender of this ship some quibble 



2o6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

was likewise raised. Nelson ordered one of our 
brigs to approach her, and then proceeded in his 
gig to a Danish ship within the battery to 
communicate with the Commodore. Brenton 
affirms that Nelson had meanwhile despatched a 
message to Sir Hyde Parker to send Captain 
Otway to the " Holstein " and claim her. 
Otway arrived. As the boat drove alongside 
the ship Otway ordered his coxswain, a daring, 
careless fellow, to jump aloft and bring away the 
pennant, whilst he (Otway) conversed with the 
commanding officer. Jack sprang into the chan- 
nels and trotted up the rigging without appar- 
ently exciting attention. He hauled down the 
pennant, stuffed it into his bosom, and regained 
the boat. Captain Otway failed to convince the 
Danish officer. He pointed out, however, that 
the ship had struck her colours and was a prize. 
They agreed to refer the matter to the Danish 
Commodore, who in reply to Captain Otway's 
demand said that the ship had not struck her 
colours, that her ensign had been shot away, 
and that her pennant was still flying. " Look 
at it. Sir ! " he said to Otway. " Look at it 
yourself. Sir ! " replied Otway. The Commo- 
dore, lifting up his eyes, saw with profound 
mortification that the pennant was gone ! "The 
ship is undoubtedly British property," he said. 



" All in the Downs 



207 



With the help of a schooner, Otway cut the 
"Holstein's" cables, and she was towed clear 
of the batteries. 

Meanwhile Nelson had gained the ship he 
had made for, and found, not Fischer, but an 
old West Indian acquaintance. Captain Miiller, 
on board. He put the matter of the " Zea- 
land " so effectively and graciously that the 
Danish officers not only conceded his point, but 
parted from him with the warmest admiration 
for his manner, tact, and courtesy. 

Next day (April 4) submits an extraordinary 
picture. Nelson went ashore, accompanied by 
Captain Hardy and Captain Fremantle, to wait 
upon the Prince of Denmark. Dense crowds 
assembled to view him. What sort of reception 
was he to get ? The mob seemed enraged at 
what they conceived his insolence in daring to 
land, and he was safeguarded by a strong body 
of troops. Some deny this, and contend that 
Nelson was received with acclamations. Now 
it is not very likely that the people of Copen- 
hagen, after the recent hideous conflict, and after 
they had seen their hulks and ships in flames, 
or made prizes of, would greet Nelson as he 
stepped ashore with any sort of enthusiasm. 
His heroism was nothing to them. The Nile 
and St. Vincent made no appeal to them. Here 



2o8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

was this man in a cocked hat, and an empty- 
sleeve secured to his breast ; here was this man 
who had put Denmark, into black coolly coming 
ashore. " The whole town," Colonel Stewart 
says, " was in a state of terror, astonishment, and 
mourning. The oldest inhabitant had never 
seen a shot fired in anger at his native country." 

Nelson was guarded to the Palace, dined with 
the Prince, then had a long talk all alone with 
his Royal Highness. He saw Count Bernstoif, 
the Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs, for a 
moment, and in that moment slapped his opin- 
ions into the Minister with the heat of a broad- 
side. He told him he could not help saying he 
had acted a very wrong part in involving the 
two countries, for that our countries ought never 
to quarrel. Afterwards the Count gave Nelson 
a wide berth. 

Nelson did not again land until the 9th ; 
with him was Lindholm, who appears to have 
been a diplomatist of great good sense, kindness, 
and moderation. A crowd went with him to 
the Palace, but the demeanour of the people 
had ceased to be aggressive. The Danes were 
afraid of Russia : Nelson represented with un- 
usual candour that his object in asking for a 
cessation of hostilities for fourteen weeks was 
that he might gain time to deal with the Russian 



" All in the Downs '* 209 

fleet and then return to the Danes. A Com- 
missioner hinted in French at a renewal of hos- 
tilities. Nelson, who had not visited France 
for nothing, turned to one who was with him, 
and exclaimed, with mingled heat and contempt, 
" Renew hostilities ! Tell him that we are 
ready at a moment, ready to bombard this very 
night." The Commissioner apologised. 

No decision could be arrived at as to the du- 
ration of the Armistice ; the matter must be 
referred to the Crown Prince, who held a levee 
in rooms which had been stripped of their furni- 
ture for fear of a bombardment. The Prince 
led the way upstairs to a grand dinner, and Nel- 
son, leaning on a friend's arm, muttered in his 
ear, " Though I have only one eye, I see all 
this would burn very well." He sat on the 
Prince's right hand, and all was cordiality and, 
perhaps, revelry, though not " by night ; " 
eventually the Prince consented to an armistice 
of fourteen weeks. 

Writing of this battle to a friend. Nelson 
says, " The French have always in ridicule 
called us a nation of shopkeepers ... so I hope 
we shall always remain, and, like other shop- 
keepers, if our goods are better than that of any 
other country, and we can afford to sell them 
cheaper, we must depend upon our shop being 

14 



2 1 o Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

resorted to." For this victory the King con- 
ferred on Nelson the dignity of a Viscount of 
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire- 
land. There were no medals, nor did the City 
of London vote its thanks. In short, though a 
splendid, it was not a popular victory. The 
Danes were our very good friends, in spite of 
their insensate attitude in respect to the Armed 
Neutrality. It was like fighting with brothers, 
and triumphing over their slaughtered remains. 
In our age Denmark has suffered us to cull a 
sweet and tender flower from her royal garden. 
We hail the princely Danish lady as mother of 
our Kings to be, and this is better than bom- 
barding Copenhagen. 

Sir Hyde Parker was recalled to England, 
and Nelson took his place. There is little that 
lends itself to romantic colour in his proceedings 
after he sailed to Revel Roads in search of the 
Russian fleet. Colonel Stewart gives us a 
glimpse of Nelson's life at this time. He rose 
between four and five o'clock, and went to bed 
about ten. Breakfast was served at six o'clock, 
and sometimes it was nearer five when it was 
ready. A midshipman or two were always of 
the party. He never lost sight of the midship- 
men. He remembered his own hopes and 
dreams and fears when he was a lad at sea, and 



" All in the Downs " 211 

compassion and kindness combined in his treat- 
ment of the youths. He would even during the 
middle watch — that is, between twelve and four 
in the morning — send a message of invitation 
to the little fellows to breakfast with him. 
Whilst at table he would enter into their boyish 
jokes, and, says Stewart, " be the most youthful 
of the party." He showed every consideration 
to his officers. " He is no sailor who ill-uses a 
sailor," runs the old forecastle saying, and if the 
excellence of a sailor is to be proportioned by 
his treatment of sailors, then Nelson surely was 
the first sailor of them all. Every officer of his 
ship dined with him in turn. As a host he was 
polite and hospitable. He invariably contrived 
that the business of the fleet should be de- 
spatched before eight o'clock. This gave him 
command of the whole day, and Colonel Stewart 
tells us that " the alertness which this example 
imparted throughout the fleet can only be un- 
derstood by those who witnessed it." His prin- 
ciple was to keep all hands employed. The 
various squadrons were constantly kept on the 
move. " Keep them going," he used to say, 
" no matter how and no matter where." 

Shortly before Nelson returned to England 
he received the instructions of his Majesty 
George III. to invest Rear- Admiral Graves with 



2 1 2 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

the Order of the Bath. The Royal Standard 
was hung over a chair raised upon a skylight on 
the quarter-deck. A guard was ranged on each 
hand. The chair represented the throne, and 
when Nelson stepped up the ladder he made 
three reverences to it. The scene was imposing. 
All the captains of the fleet in full dress uni- 
forms attended. Rear-Admiral Graves was in- 
troduced ; he bowed thrice to the throne, and 
once to Nelson. He then knelt, and Nelson 
laid the sword upon him, accompanying this act 
by a very dignified yet animated speech. He 
next placed the ribbon on the new Knight's 
shoulder, and the star on his left breast. The 
whole fleet then fired a salute of twenty-one 
guns, and the Royal Standard was hauled down. 
Nelson left the Baltic in a small brig called 
the " Kite," commanded by Captain Digby. He 
was unwilling to take a larger craft from the 
fleet. His resignation was deeply lamented by 
ofhcers and men, and a general depression 
damped the spirits of the ships' companies. He 
sailed on June 19 and landed at Yarmouth on 
July I. Here was a considerable voyage for a 
man impatient to get home. Certainly if the 
sea-ofhcer of those days was not a good practi- 
cal seaman, it was not for want of being com- 
pelled to use the sea. For months and months 



*' All in the Downs" 213 

a man had nothing under him but a heaving 
keel. Nelson was thinking of Lady Hamilton, 
and we need not doubt that he made Captain 
Digby crack on. " Topmast and t'gallant stun- 
sails, Sir," and " Oh, yes, she '11 carry that lower 
stunsail very comfortably. Heave the log. 
What is it ? " " Eight, my Lord ! " " Damned 
if those cloths have given her even half a knot." 
Eight knots would probably mean half a gale 
of wind for the brig " Kite." All acquainted 
with the old types of ships would know the sort 
of waggon she was. If she could look, up to 
within six and a half points she did well. The 
hull of the dredger to-day ironically perpetuates 
the shapeliness of such a brig as Nelson washed 
home in from the Baltic. 

On going ashore at Yarmouth he went to the 
house that had been called the Wrestler's Inn — 
it was now named Nelson's Hotel. He visited 
some sick and wounded men who had been 
brought to Yarmouth after the battle of Copen- 
hagen ; then, having lunched, he left at five 
o'clock for London, escorted as far as Lowestoft 
by a troop of cavalry. Sir William Hamilton 
was living in Piccadilly, and to his house Nelson 
repaired on his arrival in London. A party had 
been invited to meet him ; it included the Rev- 
erend William and his wife, their son and daugh- 



2 1 4 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

ter, and Captain E. T. Parker, a great favourite 
of Nelson. Lady Nelson was still alive ; the 
Reverend William knew it, but this oily gentle- 
man saw nothing in his brother's relations with 
Lady Hamilton to hinder him from dwelling, 
himself and his wife and family, under her hus- 
band's roof, and making use of her whenever 
opportunity gave him a chance. Nelson had 
no high opinion of his brother. Writing in 
February, 1801, he says: "My brother has a 
bluntness and a want of fine feelings which we 
are not used to ; but he means nothing." And 
a month later he says : " Reverend Sir you will 
find a great bore at times ; therefore he ought 
to amuse himself all the mornings and not 
always to dine with you, as Sir William may 
not like it." 

London was hot and deserted. Sir William 
Hamilton was an angler. Lady Hamilton, who, 
of course, took complete charge of Nelson, sug- 
gested atrip to the country. They went to Box 
Hill and afterwards to The Bush Inn at Staines. 
Here Nelson wrote a letter to Lord St. Vincent, 
telling him he was so unwell with the pain in his 
stomach that he had been forced to " get again 
into the country." He apologises for not din- 
ing with a certain nobleman, and says that large 
dinners truly alarm him. The English summer 



'' All in the Downs " 



215 



country, after weeks of shipboard and the 
bloody hours of Copenhagen, must have pro- 
vided such a delight as only a sailor could taste 
to its innermost root. The desire of the long- 
voyage mariner approaching home is to nail the 
flaps of his ears to the back of his head and to 
steer a straight course for the inland wood. 
Nelson fished ; Emma sat beside him, and, as 
he had but one arm, baited the hook. They 
floated upon the river Thames while Sir William 
bobbed for gudgeon on the river's bank. Lord 
William Gordon writes of them as Antony and 
Cleopatra, and adds, — 

While you, I mean, and Henry, — in a wherry 
Are cheek by jole afloat there making merry. 

Henry Is Lord Nelson. Lord William clearly 
had the "Henry and Emma" of Prior in his 
mind. 

This little holiday was made all too brief by 
the call of duty. Buonaparte had this sum- 
mer (1801) collected a large flotilla of flat boats 
and an army at Boulogne. He did not disguise 
his intention to invade England, and his can- 
dour might have proved that he meant nothing 
of the sort. This country, however, was in a 
state of panic. Nothing less than Lord Nelson 
in person in a frigate in the Downs with his eye 



2 1 6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

on the French could soothe the general conster- 
nation. How should we like the news in this 
age that the French were collecting a great force 
at Boulogne, Calais, and other places to invade 
us ? We may be quite sure we should do that 
which our forefathers perhaps did npt do for 
want of opportunity, I mean, we should load the 
newspapers with correspondence, and every day's 
issue would teem with the suggestions of naval 
experts and others. Perhaps, too, we should 
realise the danger in the price of Consols. But 
our forefathers were better off than we should 
be were another invasion threatened ; their mer- 
chantmen were filled with British seamen, their 
convoyed fleets could bring food to their homes. 
In our day the ships of our merchant navy are 
undermanned with foreigners, none of whom 
could be trusted if war broke out ; and, as we 
should have very few English seamen to fall 
back upon, hundreds of merchantmen would be 
laid up for lack of men. We should be starved 
by our want of foresight, and so give the enemy 
a better chance of invading us. 

The Commander-in-Chief in the Downs was 
Nelson's old friend. Admiral Lutwidge, who 
made no trouble in being superseded by Nelson. 
On the 27th his flag was hoisted at Sheerness 
on board the " Unite " frigate. " To-day," says 



" All in the Downs " 



217 



he, writing to Lady Hamilton, " I dined with 
Admiral Graeme, who has also lost his right 
arm; and, as the Commander of the Troops 
has lost his leg, I expect we shall be caricatured 
as the lame defenders of England." Captain 
Parker, whom he regarded almost as a son, used 
to sit next to him at meals to cut his meat. 
The loss of a right arm is an inconvenient 
thing. Nelson makes no trouble of his per- 
sonal afflictions. But a full portrait of the 
man should not omit even so trifling a detail 
as this of a friend cutting up his meat that he 
might dine. 

His dash and spirit were instantly felt on his 
arrival at Sheerness. His orders comprised 
thirty of the ships under his command. On his 
way to Deal he stopped at Faversham to exam- 
ine into the state of a body of men called the 
Sea-Fencibles. The idea of this force was due 
to Captain Home Popham, but he had little 
knowledge of the elements he sought to mould. 
The longshoreman was then, as he is now, a 
capital smuggler, a hardy lifeboatsman, very 
nimble in the manoeuvring of his own craft, in 
love with that capstan of the beach against which 
he loafs ajid lounges, a great growler, and the 
last man in the world to trust to as a resource. 
In vain Nelson appealed to the Sea-Fencibles. 



2 1 8 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

" Not one Frenchman," says he, " would be 
allowed to set his foot on British soil ; it is 
therefore necessary that all good men should 
come forward at this momentous occasion to 
oppose the enemy, and more particularly the 
Sea-Fencibles, who voluntarily enrol themselves 
to defend their country afloat, which is the true 
place where Britain ought to be defended, that 
the horrors of war may not reach the peaceful 
abodes of our families." What was the issue of 
this and other appeals ? Of two thousand six 
hundred Sea-Fencibles only three hundred and 
eighty-five offered themselves to go on board a 
ship. Their argument was, " Our employment 
will not allow us to go from our homes beyond 
a day or two and for actual service." As a 
Naval Reserve it must be admitted that Pop- 
ham's Sea-Fencibles were a failure. 

Nelson shifted his flag to the " Medusa " and 
kept watch in the Downs. It was an extremely 
thankless office, presently to become wofuUy 
cheerless when the rigging began to shudder 
with the chill of the autumnal wind. Of all pic- 
turesque sea-bits, even in this age, I know 
nothing more fascinating than the wide and airy 
field of Downs when its waters are pawed by 
many ships, and the white line of the Ramsgate 
coast gleams soft as sifted snow as it winds out 



"All in the Downs" 219 

of Pegwell Bay through the Hquid air into an 
altitude of sixty or seventy feet. But in Nel- 
son's time there survived much of that romance 
of the sea which has been rudely expelled from 
the ocean life in these days. Every ship was 
a picture, quaint and curious, and full of colour, 
brave with pennants like banners, of all varieties 
of mould and of divers rigs. One hears of as 
many as nine hundred sail bringing up in the 
Downs wind-bound. Nelson would sometimes 
witness such a sight ; The French were close 
aboard ; the tonnage that passed through the 
Gulls was convoyed ; convoyed ships would 
occasionally be obliged to bring up, and there 
was no reason why the " Medusa " should not 
again and again have been surrounded by 
several hundred ships waiting for a slant of 
wind to swell their topsails for the Thames or 
West. 

Now here is a picture for a painter : Nelson 
in the Downs in the " Medusa " ; make the 
month August ; his frigate in the midst of two 
hundred anchored merchantmen. These, with 
the men-of-war, would give the brush all neces- 
sary colour. In those days ships were fantas- 
tically equipped ; the quaint imaginations of an 
earlier period (we owed much to the Dutch of 
the seventeenth century ; their Indiamen were 



220 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

remarkable examples of the genius of marine 
decoration) still lingered as inspirations in the 
shipwright's yard. The stern of a ship would 
glow in gilt over the brine trembling from her 
sides, and the light of her large cabin windows 
would strike in spokes of fire glorifying the 
whole fabric, upon whose length the eye would 
now run with mingled merriment and admira- 
tion, so lofty was the poop, so depressed — yea, 
to the very figurehead — the bows. We would 
mark in her bulwarks a little grin of teeth. We 
would marvel at the clumsiness of her spars, 
yards, and rigging, yet we would admit that this 
very quality of clumsiness makes the picture the 
romantic sight we find it. 

But deep interest may be found by all sea- 
lovers, not only in the aspect of the shipping 
which rode round about Nelson in the Downs, 
but in the various characters of the craft. You 
do not see the slaver now, — the long, low, black- 
hulled beauty with a pivoted brass gun on her 
forecastle, and her masts raking into a sugges- 
tion of nimble heels which affects the vision with 
an illusion of velocity, albeit she is at rest strain- 
ing at her cable yonder. You do not see the 
pirate. She does not, indeed, hoist the black 
flag in the presence of Nelson. But that brig 
there, whose captain will tell you that he is 



" All in the Downs " 221 

bound to the West Indies, is as surely going 
a-pirating soon as the wind blows her out of the 
Channel, as that she is pierced for four guns of 
a side, and as that her commander has a face 
that makes you think of a rat staring through a 
ball of oakum, and as that her forecastle and 
'tween decks are full of men who do not, in 
these crowded Downs, needlessly obtrude them- 
selves upon the general marine eye. 

The French erected batteries both for guns 
and mortars on each side of Boulogne, and a 
line of boats, all armed, large and small. Jay out- 
side the port. These vessels were shelled by the 
bombs under Nelson, but without much effect. 
As early as August 3d Nelson was beginning to 
suspect that the threatened invasion of our coun- 
try was nothing more than a piece of bombastic 
brag designed to divert attention from other 
measures ; for he then noticed that " these ves- 
sels anchored before this port appear to me in- 
capable in the smoothest water of being rowed 
more than one and a half [sic] per hour." He 
adds : " With our present force from Dieppe 
to Dunkirk certainly nothing can with impunity 
leave the coast of France one mile." This is 
•convincing enough to a seaman. He writes, 
however, with conviction next day to Adding- 
ton : " I think I may venture to assure you 



2 22 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

that the French army will not embark at Bou- 
logne for the invasion of England." 

A night scene which should be depicted by 
the pen of a Michael Scott unrolls itself with 
the panorama of Nelson's life at this time. The 
hour is about half-past eleven ; the night is very 
dark. A light wind is blowing, and the decks of 
the " Medusa " are thrown out upon the black 
tapestry of the atmosphere by the dull gleams of 
battle lanterns. At this hour a number of boats 
which have been riding alongside the frigate put 
off. They are full of men, and are formed into 
four divisions commanded by Captain Philip 
Somerville, Captain E. T. Parker, Captain Isaac 
Catgrave, and Captain Robert Jones. These 
were the armed boats of the squadron, and they 
were accompanied by a division of mortar-boats. 
The design was to attack the French flotilla at 
Boulogne. Although naval historians pass lightly 
over this service, it was as sharp, perilous, and 
arduous of its kind as any you may read of. 
The French flotilla included brigs of from two 
hundred to two hundred and fifty tons, armed 
with from four to eight heavy long guns, eigh- 
teen, twenty-four, and even thirty-six pounders. 
The flats had stout bulwarks, and carried one 
hundred and eighty men in soldiers and seamen. 
They were armed with thirteen-inch mortars, 



"All in the Downs" 223 

twenty-four pounders, swivels, and abundance 
of small arms. This was a formidable flotilla for 
a boat to attack ; and day and night the enemy 
was on the alert, for he knew that Nelson was 
near. The tide was running ; the dusk was so 
deep that the boats lost sight of one another ; 
the divisions dared not signal by flashes, and so, 
unhappily, they separated. The first division, 
under Captain Somerville, was carried to the 
eastward of Boulogne Bay. The Commander 
ordered the boats to cast one another off, and 
make for the flotilla as best they could. Just 
before dawn the leading boats attacked a brig 
lying close to the pier-head. She was carried, 
but she was secured by a chain, and so heavy a 
fire of musketry and grape-shot was opened upon 
our brave fellows from the shore, as well as from 
three luggers and a second brig, that the prize 
was abandoned. It was now morning; the troops 
were visible on the pier and upon the shore ; the 
old town of Boulogne rose to its rampart walls, 
a peaceful backing for its warlike picture of har- 
bour. It was impossible to attempt more in 
dayHght, and with a total of eighteen killed and 
fifty-five wounded, the first division of boats 
pushed out of the bay. 

Parker's division reached the flotilla before 
one o'clock in the morning. A large brig called 



2 24 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

the " Etna," wearing a French commodore's 
pendant, was instantly attacked. How splendid 
were those old boat-attacks of our men ! Did 
you ever read the story of the cutting out of 
" La Chevrette " ? It will make you proud of 
the blood in your veins if you are an English- 
man; but it is one instance only of a thousand 
splendid, fearless, marvellously devoted, and he- 
roic actions of a like sort, whether you seek for 
their memorials along the coast of France, or 
search the Mediterranean seaboard, or hunt 
through the maritime annals of the West Indies. 
The attack of Parker's people was magnificent ; 
they gave that great British cheer which never 
failed to strike dismay into the heart of the foe, 
as has been written again and again. But by 
the flashes of musketry they found themselves 
obstructed by a very strong netting triced up to 
the brig's yard-arms, and it was not even in the 
power of British seamen to scramble over the 
impediment. Even while they were struggling 
to board, our men were fired upon by the brig's 
great guns and some two hundred soldiers ranged 
along the line of the bulwark rail. The dis- 
charge knocked our people back into the boats. 
The other boats of this division were also re- 
pulsed and withdrew from the scene of war, a 
melancholy procession, with a loss of twenty- 



" All in the Downs " 225 

one killed and forty-two wounded, Captain 
Parker being among the latter, mortally. 

The efforts of the third division were equally 
heroic and equally futile. The fourth division, 
under Captain Jones, owing to the tide, could 
not get at the enemy, and put back to the squad- 
ron. Nelson was deeply chagrined. " My 
mind," he wrote to Lord St. Vincent, " suffers 
much more than if I had a leg shot off in this 
late business." In this same letter he makes an 
admission which should comfort the soul of the 
landsman : " Heavy sea, sick to death — this 
seasickness I shall never get over." 



IS 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PURSUIT OF THE FRENCH. 

POSSIBLY the most uncomfortable time that 
Nelson ever spent in his life he passed in 
the Downs. His worries and troubles were real 
and fictitious. He found Deal the coldest place 
in the world, and the dance of his frigate kept 
him ceaselessly oppressed with nausea. There 
he lost Captain Parker, for whom his love was 
as a father's for a son. The poor fellow had 
been desperately wounded in the attack at Bou- 
logne. He died September 27th, and Nelson, 
who, in company with Admiral Lutwidge, Lord 
George Cavendish, and others, attended the 
funeral, wept during the ceremony. 

He suffered also from an imaginary grievance 
in the behaviour of Troubridge, who was now 
become one of " My Lords " at the Admiralty. 
He seems to have believed that he was kept in 
the Downs entirely by Troubridge, who " has so 
completely prevented my ever mentioning any- 
body's service that I am become a cipher and 



The Pursuit of the French 227 

he has gained a victory over Nelson's spirit. I 
am kept here. For what, he may be able to 
tell — I cannot." If Troubridge writes of him 
in kindness, he finds something in his language 
that reads like a sneer: " Troubridge writes that 
the weather has set in fine again ; he hopes I 
shall get walks on shore. He is, I suppose, 
laughing at me — but never mind." 

It is rather extraordinary that Mr. Squeers' 
father should have written to Nelson about this 
time, for he tells Lady Hamilton that " It is not 
long ago a person from Yorkshire desired me to 
lend him three hundred pounds, as he was going 
to set up a school." This strange circumstance 
seems to have been overlooked by Charles 
Dickens in his account of Dotheboys Squeers. 
At the root, however, of all these complaints 
was a secret pining for Lady Hamilton. It is 
true that Sir William and Emma visited Nelson 
at Deal on two or three occasions, but these 
infrequent meetings could but increase the infat- 
uated man's desire to be dwelling under one roof 
with his mistress. It is marvellous that she did 
not ruin his career at this juncture. Whilst he 
held the Downs command he bought a house 
without seeing it. He purchased it through 
Lady Hamilton, and he valued it as an estate, 
with plate and furniture, at twenty thousand 



2 28 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

pounds when later he wrote down a list of 
incomings and disbursements. The house is 
described by Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson as a cheery, 
well-built, homely villa, skirted with shrub- 
beries, nestled in finely timbered paddocks, and 
within an easy drive from Hyde Park Corner. 
It was called Merton Place. Sir William Ham- 
ilton was astonished. " A seaman alone," he 
wrote to Nelson, "could have given a fine 
woman full powers to choose and fit up a resi- 
dence for him without seeing it himself" He 
was finding something also in considerations of 
his pension to vex and humiliate him. Lords 
St. Vincent and Duncan, who had fought one 
battle apiece only, had each received a pension 
of three thousand pounds. Nelson, who had 
won two of the most glorious victories in history, 
to whose tactics Lord St. Vincent owed the con- 
quest which had made a peer of him, was in 
receipt of no more than two thousand. He felt, 
and justly felt, this difference as a hardship. He 
fretted over it with wounded pride ; neverthe- 
less, his pension was never increased. 

He was fated to endure a protracted stay in 
the Downs. " I pray God we may have peace, 
when it can be had with honour," he wrote to 
Hercules Ross in September, anticipating one of 
the late Lord Beaconsfield's original remarks, 



The Pursuit of the French 229 

" but I fear that the scoundrel Buonaparte wants 
to humble us, as he has done the rest of 
Europe." Nevertheless, he felt the indignity of 
his command. Certainly this obligation of sen- 
tinelling the Narrow Seas scarcely needed the 
genius of a Nelson. You get a little insight into 
his life from his chatty letters to Lady Hamil- 
ton. He tells her he landed at Walmer, " but 
found Billy fast asleep, so left my card " ; 
then he calls on Lord George Cavendish, who 
has gone to London; then on his old friend 
Lutwidge, with whom and his wife he partakes 
of a plain dinner, and then on board again — if, 
indeed, he can get on board, for often the surf 
runs so high that it is impossible to launch a 
boat. 

A deep and abiding source of indignation with 
him was the neglect, or the refusal, of the Gov- 
ernment to issue medals for Copenhagen. He 
had been honoured, but no testimony of appre- 
ciation beyond the thanks of Parliament had 
followed the splendid behaviour of our officers 
and men on the 2,d of April, and as a true ship- 
mate Nelson's soul was sickened by this insen- 
sibility. The City of London had made no 
sign, and this also galled him. He wrote indig- 
nantly that a Lord Mayor of London had said 
to him, " You find victories and we will find 



230 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

rewards," and the City of London, which exists 
by victories at sea, had not kept its promise. 

On the 2 2d October he was released on 
leave, and straightway went to Merton, the 
highly idealised " cottage " which seems to have 
haunted his dreams, man and boy. He found a 
very charming house ; Emma was radiant and 
languishing, and Sir William, pale, ill, and cour- 
teous. The place was made as rural as a sailor 
could wish by cocks and hens and pigs. In 
fact. Sir William had previously written to him : 
" It would make you laugh to see Emma and- 
her mother fitting up pigstys and hencoops, 
and already the canal is enlivened with ducks, 
and the cock is strutting with his hens about the 
walks." Supplemented by Emma, this sort of 
home would be a paradise to a sailor fresh from 
" salt beef and honour," weary of the ceaseless 
motion of the deck and of the life of an anchored 
ship in the Downs. 

On the 29th of October he took his seat in 
the House of Lords as a Viscount. Next day 
he made his maiden speech. It related to Sir 
James Saumarez' gallant conduct in the action 
with the combined fleet of the enemy off Alge- 
ziras in the preceding July. His speech was 
smart and full of spirit. He highly praised Sir 
James, and gave an account of some of his 



The Pursuit of the French 231 

memorable services. Sir James was a gallant and 
an able officer, but he was by no means a lov- 
able character, and scarcely deserved at Nelson's 
hands the warm-hearted sympathy he received. 

It is extraordinary to notice that the character 
of Nelson's relations with Lady Hamilton seems 
to have been unsuspected even by those who 
lived close to them, though how it was out of 
doors we know by the King's reception and by 
what Miss Cornelia Knight says. Are we to 
believe that the relations were understood and 
deliberately connived at ? It is impossible to 
suppose that Sir William failed to understand 
what was passing under his very nose. That 
the Rev. William Nelson considered Emma 
very good company for his wife merely means 
that it was the Rev. William who thought so. 
But how shall we reconcile old Edmund's will- 
ingness to live with his son and the Hamiltons 
at Merton Place? Yet to Merton Place he 
would have gone but for his death, which hap- 
pened on April 26, 1 802, at Bath. He was aged 
seventy-nine, and the remains were carried to 
Burnham-Thorpe for interment. One would 
wish to muse for a little on the memory and 
character of a man who had Nelson for a son. 
After I had written my " Life of Nelson," I 
received a letter from the present Earl, in which 



232 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

his Lordship informed me that I was mistaken 
in my estimate of the character of the Rev. Ed- 
mund, and that he (Earl Nelson) had in his 
possession several letters written by the Rev. 
Edmund, exhibiting a very beautiful nature and 
disposition. I cannot but repeat, however, what 
I have before said, that Nelson's father was a 
man of a cold, formal, and insipid piety, whose 
expression you cannot follow in his published 
correspondence without displeasure and often 
disgust. But, as I have said, his son loved, 
honoured, and liberally cherished him to the 
end. 

While he was on shore on leave. Nelson 
made a journey into Wales. The inevitable 
Hamiltons accompanied him, and with him 
went the Rev. William Nelson, his wife and 
son. They visited Blenheim, and all will regret 
to learn that they were most unequivocally 
snubbed. The Duke of Marlborough declined 
to receive them ; indeed, they might have been 
a set of cockney excursionists. The Duke, on 
hearing that they were in his grounds, was good 
enough to send some refreshments out to them ; 
but they refused to partake of his gracious hos- 
pitality. One of this party had been British 
Ambassador at Naples, and another was the 
greatest naval hero the world had ever produced ! 



The Pursuit of the French 233 

It is said that the Duke was a very shy man. 
An apology has been made for him by suggest- 
ing the absence of the usual ceremonies of in- 
troductory etiquette. It is more than probable, 
however, as is suggested by the writer of the 
" Memoirs of Lady Hamilton," that the party 
were declined admittance because the ladies of the 
Marlborough family did not desire the honour 
of Lady Hamilton's acquaintance. This, indeed, 
makes a strange picture in Nelson's life. To 
think of our beloved hero inhospitably repulsed 
from the lordly pile which memorialises^ the ex- 
ploits of a great warrior by land ! What was in 
his mind whilst he contrasted the Palace of 
Blenheim with its miles of rich estate with his 
own little home of Merton Place? Is it better 
to be a great General in this maritime country 
than a great Admiral? It is earnestly to be 
hoped that Nelson did not long linger within 
the precincts of that ducal building. Every- 
where else, however, he met with all the honour 
he deserved. They rang the bells of the 
churches. Crowds hurrahed themselves hoarse. 
Bands of music greeted him. Guns were fired, 
and the militia turned out. At Swansea he was 
dragged in triumph by a body of sailors. Floral 
arches were erected ; the cities bestowed their 
freedoms upon him. At Monmouth he made a 



2 34 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

speech, the concluding sentences of which are 
well worth transcribing : " In my own person I 
have received an overflowing measure of the 
nation's gratitude — far more than I ever merited 
or expected ; because the same success would 
have crowned the efforts of any other British 
Admiral who had under his command such dis- 
tinguished officers and such gallant crews. And 
here let me impress it on the mind of every offi- 
cer in the Service that to whatever quarter of the 
globe he may be destined, whether to the East or 
West Indies, to Africa or America, the eyes of his 
countrymen are upon him, and so long as public 
men in public stations exert themselves in those 
situations to fulfil the duty demanded from them 
by the public, they will always find the British 
nation ready to heap upon them the utmost ex- 
tent of its gratitude and its applause." 

These are words which sound as trumpet 
tones through the years, and it is well in our 
days of peace that we should sometimes look 
back and hear and see what those great sailors 
were doing and saying in those red and dreadful 
times of war. 

Sir William Hamilton departed this life on 
the 6th of April, 1803. Nelson and Emma had 
sat up together for six nights by the bedside of 
the sick man, who died holding his wife's and 



The Pursuit of the French 235 

Nelson's hands. It never will be credited that 
Sir William was ignorant of his wife's infidelity, 
yet he expressly says in a remarkable letter : " I 
well know the purity of Lord Nelson's friend- 
ship for Emma and me." Nelson made much 
of this loss in his correspondence and lamented 
it most strenuously. Lady Hamilton was not 
to be outdone. She poses thus upon her hus- 
band's remains : " April 6. — Unhappy day for 
the forlorn Emma. Ten minutes past ten, dear, 
blessed Sir William left me." 

Not for long, however, was Nelson to enjoy 
the society of the widow. On May 16 he was 
appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Mediter- 
ranean. On that date war was declared, and 
his instructions were to proceed to Toulon and 
deal with the ships of the enemy as he could. 
He was also to keep an eye on the Spaniard 
and the Dutch at sea, and to prevent Spanish 
ships of war from combining with French or 
Dutch squadrons. On the i8th of May he 
hoisted his flag on board the "Victory " at Spit- 
head. His characteristic eagerness is again 
shown. A despatch from Portsmouth, dated 
May 20, stated that such was " the anxiety of 
Lord Nelson to embark, that yesterday, to 
every one who spoke to him of his sailing he 
said, ' I cannot before to-morrow, and that 's 



236 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

an age.' This morning, before ten o'clock, his 
Lordship went off in a heavy shower of rain, 
and sailed with a northerly wind." 

He was now to enter upon one of the most 
tedious of all the services that naval warfare 
provided for the sailor in the days of tacks and 
sheets. He was to watch Toulon. He was to 
fight the French ships if they came out. But 
they would not come out, and so he had to keep 
on watching Toulon. His spell of work ran into 
eighteen months. It is impossible to describe 
the tediousness of it, though CoUingwood's term 
of devoted service after Trafalgar ran into five 
years — that is, from 1805 to 18 10, in which 
year he died at sea while going home. It was 
constantly blowing Levanters, and whenever 
the sea ran high Nelson was sick. He found 
it hard to imagine what the enemy intended 
to do. Sometimes he thought that they would 
try to take Sicily before pushing on to Egypt ; 
sometimes that the fleet would go direct to 
cover the army across the Morea; sometimes 
that the enemy was bound outside the Mediter- 
ranean. This spell of watching the French is 
memorable for the excellent health enjoyed 
throughout by the several ships' companies, — 
wholly due to the sanitary victualling measures 
of Nelson. When ships watched ports they 



The Pursuit of the French 237 

did not heave to, but sailed up and down in 
front of them. At regular intervals, therefore, 
the vessels went about. The beat of a pendu- 
lum could not be more monotonous. As pic- 
tures, the line-of-battle ships would look very 
stately, swelling white and lofty ; a Hne-of-battle 
ship in " stays " made a grand figure ; she floated 
round in grandeur into the wind. This might 
be very well for once or twice, but eighteen 
months of it ! with gale after gale which blew 
the ships out of sight of land, reduced them to 
storm-canvas and drove them sagging tp leeward 
with struck topgallant masts! Nor were the 
ships a credit to the country. Nelson wrote to 
the Duke of Clarence that he had the happiness 
to command the finest squadron in the world : 
" Victory," " Kent," " Superb," " Triumph," 
" Belle Isle," and " Renown." But to others 
he told the truth. " To watch the French," he 
says, " I must be at sea, and if at sea must have 
bad weather; and if the ships are not fit to 
stand bad weather they are useless. I do not 
say much, but I do not believe that Lord St. 
Vincent would have kept the sea with such 

ships." 

A poor-hearted coxcomb, one La Touche 
Treville, was the French Admiral at Toulon. 
Like most cowards, this man was a liar. He 



238 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

caused a statement to be printed in the " Mon- 
iteur" to the effect that he had sailed out of 
port on the 14th of June and put the EngUsh 
Admiral to flight. Nelson bitterly resented this 
infamous fabrication. How could he answer 
such a fellow ? " I do assure you, Sir," he 
wrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty, " that 
I know not what to say except by a flat contra- 
diction, for if my character is not established by 
this time for not being apt to run away, 't is not 
worth my time to attempt to put the world 
right." He writes to others that if he gets hold 
of La Touche he will make him eat his letter. 
The French Admiral, however, cheated Nelson 
of his revenge by dying a few weeks after the 
lie had been published. The French papers, 
with unconscious irony, stated that he died in 
consequence of walking so often up to the signal- 
post upon Sepet to watch the British. " He 
has gone," wrote Nelson, " and all his lies with 
him." 

The Rev. Dr. Scott enables us to look a little 
closely into what may be termed the below- 
deck life of Nelson. The Admiral had met 
Scott in the Mediterranean ; the chaplain was 
afterwards up in the Baltic and helped Nelson 
in the arrangement of the celebrated Convention 
of Copenhagen. He was now Chaplain of the 



The Pursuit of the French 239 

" Victory," and he was one of the few who min- 
istered to Nelson when he lay dying. Scott was 
a fine linguist, and Nelson put him to wade 
through countless trifling foreign pamphlets, his 
idea being that no man ever put his hand to 
paper without having some information or the- 
ory to deliver worth attention. So side by side 
Nelson and the Chaplain would sit in the 
Admiral's cabin toiling through interminable 
papers. They occupied two black leather arm- 
chairs furnished with capacious pockets, and 
sometimes, when Scott was weary of translating, 
he would contrive to smuggle into one of these 
pockets, unobserved by Nelson, a bundle of 
unopened private letters found in prize ships. 
These chairs with an ottoman, when lashed to- 
gether, formed a bed on which Nelson often 
slept. Scott indicates in Nelson a quality of 
mind which one would not suspect from his cor- 
respondence or from such speech as is placed in 
his mouth by his biographers. It is the dry, 
arch quality that Swift enjoyed in Stella, the dis- 
position to encourage a man to talk, and if he 
should prove a blockhead, to sink him deeper 
in his own absurdity. Scott, though a very good 
man, may be suspected of vanity, and Nelson 
appears to have diverted himself with trotting 
the parson out before company. " Often after 



240 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

dinner he would lead the Doctor into arguments 
on literature, politics, Spanish language, naval 
affairs, and even invite him to deliver a lecture 
on navigation. The Doctor took him seriously, 
to the great entertainment of Captain Hardy, 
and the officers who might be present." 

In Dr. Scott's Life a good story is told of 
Nelson. A midshipman's servant fell over- 
board, and the midshipman to whom the fellow 
belonged shot after him. Nelson was highly 
delighted by this act of bravery, and when the 
pair had been hauled on deck, he called the 
streaming midshipman aft and made him lieu- 
tenant. A number of midshipmen were on 
deck, and the cheer they gave in honour of their 
messmate caught Lord Nelson's ear. He 
seemed to find something significant in it, and, 
lifting his hand for silence, he turned to the 
crowd of middies, and said, with a good-natured 
smile on his face : " Stop, young gentlemen ! 
Mr. Flin has done a gallant thing to-day — and 
he has done many gallant things before — for 
which he has got his reward. But mind, I '11 
have no more making lieutenants for servants 
falling overboard." The quiet humour of this 
is worthy of Elia. 

An instance of Nelson's liberality and kind- 
ness of heart may here be given. He took a 



The Pursuit of the French 241 

large land force afloat in his chase of the French 
after his arrival at the West Indies, and learning 
that the sailor got one pound of meat per day, 
whilst the allowance to the soldier was only 
three-quarters of a pound, he gave orders that 
so long as the men were under his command 
the rations to the services should be made 
equal. 

Meanwhile Nelson kept his fleet remarkably 
healthy, and in fine order, as he himself ex- 
presses it, " to give the French a dressing." 
The weather was constantly bad. He wrote to 
Lady Hamilton on October 18 that since 
September i they had not had four fine days, 
"and," he adds, "if the French do not come 
out soon I fear some of my ships will cry out." 
After La Touche's death Rear Admiral Duma- 
noir took command of the French fleet ; he 
was shortly afterwards replaced by Villeneuve. 
Nevertheless, the Frenchmen did not put to sea 
until Jan. 18, 1805. When the news reached 
Nelson he was with his ships at Maddalena. 
The enemy was said to have been steering 
south. Nelson went to Egypt. He did not 
find the Frenchmen there, and returned. On 
his arrival at Malta he heard that the enemy 
had put back to Toulon with many of their 

ships crippled. 

16 



242 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

They sailed again, however, from Toulon on 
March 30, but it was not until May 1 1 that 
Nelson, who had gathered that the enemy's 
combined fleet amounted to eighteen sail of the 
line, and that it had gone direct for the West 
Indies, went in pursuit. 

Strange to observe in naval history how It is 
always the British who are chasing the French. 
A small squadron flying the British flag locks 
up in port a big fleet flying the tricolour. In 
vain the British coquette with the enemy. 
They pretend to go away ; they pretend to run 
away ; they endeavour to coax Crapeau out by 
cunning exhibitions of very inferior strength. 
To no purpose. When Johnny does creep 
forth he has taken care to see that the road is 
clear. How do French historians relate these 
matters in the little histories of France which 
they write for school-boys ? Possibly they cite 
such authorities as Mr. La Touche Treville. 

Here now was Nelson in full pursuit of the 
French fleet across the wide Atlantic to the 
West Indies. The enemy's force consisted of 
eighteen ships of the line, and, for all Nelson 
knew the force might be augmented to twenty- 
eight or thirty when the Frenchmen reached 
their destination. Nelson's squadron was com- 
posed of ten sail of the line, and three frigates. 



The Pursuit of the French 243 

He had got some news of Cadiz by speaking 
the "Louisa" of Baltimore, which sailed from 
the Spanish port on May 2. Peter Billings, the 
Master, told Nelson of the sailing of five Span- 
ish line-of-battle ships, a French eighty-gun 
ship, and some smaller craft. Also he spoke of 
eleven French sail of the line and four frigates 
appearing off Cadiz, and of a Spanish line-of- 
battle ship of great value having touched the 
ground on going out. Billings talked of three 
thousand Spanish troops, and of the confusion 
that attended their embarkation. He said that 
the Spaniards could not get their ships to sea 
without great trouble. He reported that pro- 
visions were plentiful and cheap, but seamen 
were scarce, and those they had were most re- 
luctant to serve. Truly might Nelson write to 
the Secretary of the Admiralty : " It will not be 
fancied I am here on a party of pleasure running 
after eighteen sail of the line with ten, and that 
to the West Indies." 

On the squadron's arrival at the islands, the 
hunt was to begin. Where were the French ^ 
At Barbadoes, Nelson v>^as informed that Gen- 
eral Brereton had received information that 
twenty-eight sail of the enemy's fleet had been 
sighted off St. Lucia heading south. Upon this 
intelligence Nelson relied, though he afterwards 



244 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

had reason to curse it, as, in fact, in many of his 
letters he did curse it. He proceeded to 
Tobago, thence to Trinidad, thence to Grenada, 
and here he learnt that the enemy had been 
seen standing to the northwards, and that he 
had captured a convoy of fourteen sail of sugar- 
loaded ships. He sailed to Montserrat, an- 
chored at St. John's, Antigua, to land two 
thousand troops, that Lieutenant-General Sir 
William Myers had embarked, himself in com- 
mand of them ; and this done, judging now 
that the combined fleet were making for Europe, 
he sailed on his return journey. 

This is a service very easily recited ; but the 
arduousness, the devotion of it, the marvellous 
spirit which animated a little squadron of ten or 
twelve ships to hunt after twenty-eight or thirty 
huge sail of the line, — how is this to be expressed.^ 
One must endeavour to remember there was no 
steam in those times. Ships had to snatch pro- 
pulsion as best they could out of the antagonism 
of head winds, or that most Irritating condition 
of the life of the saiHng-ship, the calm and the 
catspaw. It is quite certain that Nelson meant 
to attack the enemy, let him be in what force he 
might. He is reported to have said, speaking 
without reserve to some of his Captains : " Do 
not imagine I am one of those hot-brained 



The Pursuit of the French 245 

people who fight at immense disadvantage with- 
out an adequate object. My object is partly- 
gained " — he meant that he had driven the 
enemy from the West Indies. " If we meet 
them we shall find them no less than eighteen, 
I should rather think twenty, sail of the line, 
and therefore do not be surprised if I should not 
follow them immediately. We won't part with- 
out a battle." Nelson was not the man to pur- 
sue with the idea of evading an enemy. " Our 
battle," he tells the Duke of Clarence, " most 
probably would have been fought on -the spot 
where the brave Rodney beat De Grasse." 

The squadron sailed slowly across the Atlantic, 
keeping a bright look-out for the Frenchmen 
and the Spaniards. Slow the passage was, accord- 
ing to the reckoning of these times, — an average 
of a little more than a hundred miles a day. You 
see the chafing, eager, ardent mind of the man in 
this brief extract of his private diary dated June 
21, 1805: "Midnight, nearly calm, saw three 
planks, which I think came from the French 
fleet. Very miserable, which is very foolish." 
It is midnight, and he is on the look-out. 
There may be a corner of moon in the sky; or 
perhaps in the gleams of the phosphorus cloud- 
ing the brow of the swell with golden lustre, he 
is able to distinguish the three planks. Nearly 



246 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

calm ! This is death to his irritable spirit. 
How sickening to him must be the hollow flap 
of the canvas as it beats the masts, raising a mus- 
ketry of reef-points ! Many a yarn could the 
old " Victory," as she lies off Portsmouth, spin 
(in the dialect of creaking timbers) of this won- 
derful pursuit of the French and Spanish by a 
few British ships of war across the Atlantic and 
back. Nelson's impatience, his "Jump aloft, 
young gentleman, and report anything in sight," 
the straining of his eye round the horizon, the 
hope that lighted up his face even when a pinion 
of sail was reported; this and very much more 
than this, could the old " Victory " whisper to a 
listener who knows how to interpret the language 
of ships. 

Nelson anchored at Gibraltar on July 19, and 
on the 20th he made this entry in his private 
diary : " I went on shore for the first time since 
the 1 6th June, 1803, and from having my foot 
out of the 'Victory' two years wanting ten 
days." 



CHAPTER XI 



TRAFALGAR 



NELSON sailed from Gibraltar with his 
squadron, and off Ushant joined the 
Channel fleet under Cornwallis. On the same 
day he sailed for Spithead in company with the 
" Superb," and then struck his flag and went to 
Merton. Here he found repose after his ardu- 
ous sea-toil, and happiness in the company of 
Lady Hamilton and his daughter Horatia. He 
seemed little disposed to move about in paying 
visits. He declined an invitation to Fonthill, 
the residence of William Beckford ; his excuse 
was that all his family were with him and that 
the period of his stay was very uncertain. His 
family consisted of his brother William, Mrs. 
William, and their children, Horace and Char- 
lotte (afterwards Lady Bridport), the Boltons, 
one of whom, Mr. Thomas Bolton, afterwards 
became second Earl Nelson, the Matchams, and 
Lady Hamilton. There never was so good 
and loyal a relative as Nelson. He was con- 



248 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

stantly endeavouring to assist one connection 
or another. 

It is told of Nelson that one morning, walking 
in the grounds at Merton with Admiral Sir 
Richard Keats, and talking on Naval matters, 
the hero said to his friend : " No day can be 
long enough to arrange a couple of fleets and 
fight a decisive battle according to the old 
system. When we meet them, for meet them 
we shall, I '11 tell you how I shall fight them. 
I shall form the Fleet into three Divisions in 
three Lines. One Division shall be composed 
of twelve or fourteen of the fastest two-decked 
Ships, which I shall always keep to windward, or 
in a situation of advantage ; and I shall put 
them under an officer who I am sure will 
employ them in the manner I wish if possible. 
I consider it will always be in my power to 
throw them into battle in any part I may 
choose, but if circumstances prevent their being 
carried against the enemy where I desire, I shall 
feel certain he will employ them effectually, and 
perhaps in a more advantageous manner than if 
he could have followed my orders. With the 
remaining part of the Fleet formed in two lines, 
I shall go at them at once, if I can, about one 
third of their Line from their leading ship. 
What do you think of it ? " Keats felt the 



Trafalgar 249 

question required consideration. Nelson observ- 
ing that he paused, exclaimed, " But I '11 tell 
you what I think of it. I think it will surprise 
and confound the enemy. It will bring forward 
a pell-mell battle, and that is what I want." 
This story is preserved by Nicolas. 

At last came the 2d of September, on which 
day Captain Blackwood, of the " Euryalus," 
arrived at the Admiralty with intelligence that 
the Combined Fleets had put into Cadiz. As 
early as five o'clock in the morning Blackwood 
presented himself at Merton, and found Nelson 
up and dressed. On seeing Captain Blackwood, 
Nelson exclaimed, " I am sure you bring me 
news of the French and Spanish Fleets, and I 
think I shall yet have to beat them." Lady 
Hamilton, who dictated a book about Nelson to 
a Mr. Harrison, would have us believe that 
Nelson received the news of the Franco-Spanish 
fleet with indifference. Even Southey declares 
that he asserted it was nothing to him. 
" ' Let the man trudge it who has lost his 
budget,' " Emma makes Nelson gaily observe. 
This insensibility, to be sure, is highly consist- 
ent with the memorable and marvellous pursuit 
he was fresh from ! But Emma is very minute. 
She bids us observe that he was pacing one of 
the walks of Merton garden, which he always 



250 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

called the quarter-deck, when she told him she 
perceived he was low and uneasy. He answered 
with a smile, " No, I am as happy as possible. 
I am surrounded by my family. My health has 
improved since I have been at home, and I 
would not give a sixpence to call the King my 
uncle." " I do not believe what you say," 
exclaimed Emma. " I will tell you what is the 
matter with you. You are longing to get at 
those French and Spanish fleets which you con- 
sider as your own property, and you will be 
miserable if any other man but yourself did 
the business." She then told him to go and 
offer his services, assured him that they would 
be accepted, and that he would have a glorious 
victory. He looked at her for some moments 
(so she says), and with tears in his eyes — Nel- 
son weeping on such an occasion is a stroke 
worthy of Emma — he exclaimed : " Brave 
Emma, good Emma ! If there were more 
Emmas there would be more Nelsons." 

This trash signifies that had Lady Hamilton 
turned her attention to fiction she might have 
written novels as good as Mrs. Gore's or Lady 
Blessington's. Happily, the impudent courte- 
san's lies availed her nothing. 

Emma or no Emma, Nelson received orders 
to resume the command of the Mediterranean 



Trafalgar 2 5 i 

fleet, and on the night of Friday, September 13, 
he left Merton for ever. He made this entry 
in his private diary : " At half-past ten drove 
from dear, dear Merton, where I left all which I 
could hold dear in this world to go to serve my 
King and country. May the great God, whom 
I adore, enable me to fulfil the expectations of 
my country; and if it is His good pleasure that 
I should return, my thanks will never cease 
being offered up to the throne of His mercy. 
If it is His good providence to cut short my days 
upon earth, I bow with the greatest submission, 
relying that He will protect those so dear to me 
that I may leave behind. His will be done. 
Amen, amen, amen." 

No man can go forth to fight for his country 
without gloomy forebodings, not perhaps as to 
the issue of the struggle, but as to whether he 
shall live to return home. Sir Harris Nicolas 
considers that Nelson's mind was strongly im- 
pressed with the probability that he would never 
return alive. It is stated that before he left 
London he called upon his upholsterer in 
Brewer Street, where the coffin presented to 
him by Captain Hallowell had been sent, and re- 
quested that an attestation of its identity should 
be engraved on the lid, for, he said, " I think it 
highly probable that I may want it on my return." 



252 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

He was greatly moved on leaving Merton. 
About ten at night, a few minutes before quit- 
ting his home, he went to his child's room and 
said a prayer over her. He then bade good- 
bye to Lady Hamilton, entered the chaise, and 
reached Portsmouth next day. It is very evi- 
dent that Nelson was not a superstitious man, 
or he certainly would not have chosen a Friday, 
and a 13 th of the month for his departure, when 
by lingering another hour and a half he could 
have made it Saturday the 14th. 

All who have any knowledge of the life of 
Nelson will remember that wonderful scene of 
departure on the shore before he pushed off in 
his boat. He had hoped to elude the crowd by 
quitting the George Inn through a back way, 
but they were on the beach waiting; they formed 
in procession after him. Southey tells us that 
many were in tears, and many knelt down be- 
fore him and blessed him as he passed. When 
his barge pushed off the people wept and cheered, 
and wept again. Nelson answered by waving 
his hat. Some waded into the water by the side 
of his boat. It was an extraordinary and pa- 
thetic picture. But then Southey has truly said, 
" England has had many heroes, but never one 
who so entirely possessed the love of his fellow- 
countrymen as Nelson. All men knew that his 



s 

2 

i 





Trafalgar 253 

heart was as humane as it was fearless; that 
there was not in his nature the slightest alloy 
of selfishness or cupidity ; but that with per- 
fect and entire devotion he served his coun- 
try with all his heart, and with all his soul, 
and with all his strength ; and therefore they 
loved him as truly and as fervently as he loved 
England." 

He was deeply touched by this demonstra- 
tion of popular affection, and turning to Captain 
Hardy, exclaimed, " I had their huzzas before 
— I have their hearts now." 

He sailed on the 15th in the "Victory" in 
company with the " Euryalus," and on the 28^th 
joined the fleet off Cadiz under Vice-Admiral 
Collingwood. He requested that no salute 
should be fired, and that no colour should be 
hoisted, as it was undesirable to proclaim to the 
enemy the news of every ship which joined the 
fleet. He was received with the greatest enthu- 
siasm, from ColUngwood down to the loblolli- 
boy. He communicated with the commanders 
on the day after his arrival, and explained to 
them what he termed the " Nelson touch." 
" It was Hke an electric shock," he writes to 
Emma ; " some shed tears, all approved. It was 
new, it was singular, it was simple, and from 
Admirals downwards it was repeated. * It must 



254 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

succeed if ever they will allow us to get at 
them.' " 

His presence was doubly welcome ; it brought 
with it a social sunshine into the fleet. The 
Captains dined with him ; the restraints which 
they had been made to feel under Collingwood 
vanished. I have the profoundest admiration 
for Lord Collingwood, but it must be admitted 
that the austerity and reserve of his character 
were not conducive to social intercourse and 
happiness. He was wrapped up in his duty 
and in his thoughts of his wife and children. 
Yet it is strange that the very charge which 
his Captains preferred against him, — his want 
of hospitality, his seeming incapacity of good- 
fellowship, — he had himself brought with great 
emphasis against Lord St. Vincent when he 
was serving under that Admiral. This I have 
pointed out in my Life of Collingwood. 

Nelson tells us that the officers who came on 
board to welome his return forgot his rank as 
Commander-in-Chief in the enthusiasm with 
which they greeted him. The plan of attack 
which he laid before the commanders he had 
thought out before he left England, for we are 
told that whilst dining with his friend Lord Sid- 
mouth, he drew out his plan upon a small table, 
saying, " I shall attack in two lines, led by my- 



Trafalgar 255 

se]f and Collingwood, and I am confident I shall 
capture either their van and centre or their cen- 
tre and rear." In one respect the fleet was ill- 
furnished ; Nelson had but two frigates (so he 
writes on the 5th October) to watch the enemy 
in Cadiz, and he declares that a fleet thus watch- 
ing should never be with less than eight frigates 
and three good, fast-sailing brigs. By the 1 1 th, 
however, he had five frigates, a brig, and a 
schooner on this service. 

The enemy showed no disposition to move. 
That the Combined Fleet would be obliged to 
come out sooner or later was certain ; Colling- 
wood had taken great care to intercept all sup- 
plies of provisions, and the enemy must either 
fight or starve. 

Nelson's habits of life at this period have been 
recorded by the surgeon of the "Victory," Beatty. 
The merest trifles are of interest when they re- 
late to Nelson. Beatty tells us that the hero 
had rid himself of the gout by abstaining for the 
space of nearly two years from animal food and 
wine, and all other fermented drink ; during this 
space he was a vegetarian and drank only milk 
and water. Early in life, we are told, he attrib- 
uted scurvy to salt, and left it off, and never 
afterwards took it with his food. He would 
walk the deck for six or seven hours a day. He 



256 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

rose almost habitually shortly after daybreak. 
He breakfasted in summer at six, and at seven 
in winter, and dined at about half^past two. 
These particulars, let it be understood, refer to 
the period immediately preceding Trafalgar. 
Eight or nine officers of the different ships 
usually formed his company at table. He still 
continued very sparing in his diet ; his dinner 
was often composed of the liver and wing of a 
fowl and a small plate of macaroni. He drank 
champagne, never, however, exceeding four 
glasses. He was very careless of his health. 
He took no pains to guard against wet or the 
night air, wore only a thin greatcoat, and would 
sit in wet clothes, saying that his leather waist- 
coat protected him. He seldom wore boots, 
and his feet were often damp ; and his method 
of drying them was by throwing off his shoes 
and walking on the carpet in his stockings. 
This he did to save his servant trouble, for, be 
it remembered, he had but one arm, and could 
not help himself in all offices requiring the use 
of two hands.^ 

Twelve of the ships of the Combined Fleet 
floated out of Cadiz on Saturday, the 19th of 
October. The rest did not succeed in quitting 
the harbour owing to the scantiness of the wind. 

1 All this we owe to Dr. Beatty. 



Trafalgar 257 

Blackwood, on board the " Euryalus," signalled 
that " The enemy are coming out of port." 
The "Victory," with the main body of the fleet, 
was some leagues distant. The signal was flown 
for a general chase south-east. It was not, how- 
ever, until daylight next morning that the re- 
mainder of the Franco-Spanish fleet weighed 
and put to sea. Some say that Villeneuve 
formed his fleet in five columns ; others, in 
three. There were thirty-three ships in all, 
with smaller vessels. Among them was the 
huge " Trinidad," and the sight they presented 
on the morning of Trafalgar was that .of a sort 
of crescent, so that, to employ Collingwood's 
description, " In leading down to their centre, 
I had both their van and rear abaft the 
beam." 

Early in the morning of the ever memorable 
2 1 St of October the "Victory " made the signal 
to " Form the order of sailing in two columns." 
She took out all reefs, set royals and stunsails, 
and cleared for action. Nelson was on deck 
soon after dawn. He was dressed in his Admi- 
ral's frock-coat, on the left breast of which were 
four stars of different orders. He was without 
his sword, though it had been placed ready for 
him on his table. This description of Nelson's 
dress was confirmed by Captain Sir George 

17 



258 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Westphal, who was a midshipman in the " Vic- 
tory," While the two divisions of ships were 
sailing towards the Combined Fleets — the lee 
line led by Collingwood in the " Royal Sover- 
eign," the weather line led by Nelson in the 
"Victory" — the hero gave particular directions 
for carefully removing the portrait of Lady 
Hamilton from his cabin. " Take care of my 
guardian angel," he said, and then went below 
and wrote the fDllowing historic prayer — 

Monday, October 21st, 1805. 
At daylight saw the Enemy's Combined Fleet from 
East to E.S.E. ; bore away ; made the signal for Or- 
der of Sailing, and to Prepare for Battle ; the Enemy 
with their heads to the Southward : at seven the 
Enemy wearing in succession. May the Great God, 
whom I worship, grant to my Country, and for the 
benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious Vic- 
tory ; and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it ; 
and may humanity after Victory be the predominant 
feature in the British Fleet. For myself individually, 
I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His 
blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my 
country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the 
just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen. 
Amen. Amen. 

An anecdote in connection with this prayer is 
interesting. John Pasco acted as signal-lieuten- 



Trafalgar 259 

ant of the "Victory." Whilst the fleet was 
sailing towards the French and Spanish ships 
Pasco went below to make a report and submit 
a grievance to Nelson. He entered the cabin 
and discovered Nelson on his knees writing. 
He was composing the prayer I have just tran- 
scribed. Pasco waited till he rose, and then 
communicated some report of the deck, but felt 
himself unable to represent any troubles of his 
own at such a moment. 

" The day is fine, the sight, of course, beauti- 
ful," Blackwood had written to his wife, on the 
19th, referring to the Combined Fleets which 
were coming out of Cadiz. The sight was 
equally beautiful, but grand and tremendous, 
with all tragic and momentous significance on 
this morning of the 21st. The enemy's ships 
floated like the marble shapes of cathedrals : 
they shone in the sun with the lights and splen- 
dour of the iceberg. There was little wind, 
scarce enough to keep their topgallant sails 
shuddering as they lay on the port tack with 
their heads to the north, and Cadiz snug under 
their lee. The Atlantic swell rolled into the 
shoals, barely wrinkled by the faint blue breath- 
ings of that October morning. But the British 
ships gathered an impulse from the subtle, irre- 
sistible respiration of the deep, and their canvas 



260 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

swelled as they bowed with royal stateliness for- 
ward on the send of the following folds. 

The " Royal Sovereign," with her stunsails 
making a light in the sea beside her, was ahead 
of the foremost of the ships by twenty minutes. 
Collingwood, we are told by Hercules Robin- 
son, a midshipman on board the " Euryalus," 
gravely paced the deck munching an apple. 
They called him " dear old Cuddie." What a 
heart of oak was that ! What a splendid set of 
fellows filled his 'tweendecks ! Just before that 
distant ship awoke the first low thunders of 
Trafalgar, a signal was made on board the 
" Victory." " His Lordship came to me on 
the poop," says Pasco, " and after ordering cer- 
tain signals to be made, about a quarter to noon, 
he said : ' Mr. Pasco, I wish to say to the Fleet, 
England Confides that Every Man will 
DO His Duty. And,' he added, *you must 
be quick, for I have one more to make, which 
is for Close Action.' I replied : ' If your Lord- 
ship will permit me to substitute expects for con- 
fides, the signal will soon be completed, because 
the word expects is in the vocabulary, and con- 
fides must be spelt.' His Lordship replied in 
haste and with seeming satisfaction, * That will 
do, Pasco ; make it directly.' " Thus was 
hoisted the immortal signal. They say the 



Trafalgar 261 

crews cheered when its import was communi- 
cated. A few ships of the van answered it, and 
then was hoisted at the mizzen-royal masthead 
Nelson's favourite signal for Close Action — 
No. 16. 

The foe submitted a brave, bristling, tremen- 
dous picture — thrity-three Leviathans, the 
Spaniards with crosses dangling at their spanker- 
boom ends. And towering in the thick of that 
crescent-like huddle lay the " Trinidad," of four 
rows of teeth and filled with breathless men and 
a number of priests. Shortly after the ,memor- 
able signal had been made aboard the " Victory," 
a French ship, the " Fougueux," lying astern of 
the " Santa Ana," sent a shot at the " Royal 
Sovereign." Then it was that the three British 
Admirals hoisted their respective flags, and 
every ship seized^ a Union Jack to her main- 
topmast stay, and another to her fore-topgallant 
stay. Then it was, too, that, with one exception, 
the Admirals of the Combined Fleets hoisted 
their ensigns. 

The picture of the " Royal Sovereign " alone 
in action was sublime, was magnificent, but 
whether it was war or not others must pro- 
nounce. Had it fallen a dead calm so as to 
prevent our ships from approaching the enemy, 

1 To seize is to attach, to secure. 



262 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

her fate must have been sealed ; she must have 
been bombarded into staves, for she not only 
had the " Santa Ana " (which, by the way, suf- 
fered frightfully from Collingwood's first broad- 
side) to contend with ; ahead lay the " San 
Leandro ; " the " Fougueux " raked her astern, 
and close aboard on the starboard bow and 
quarter lay the two monsters, " San Justa " and 
" Indomptable." These ships blazed their roar- 
ing artillery into the devoted British liner. 
" Rotherham," exclaimed Collingwood at this 
time to his Captain, " what would Nelson give 
to be here ! " And Nelson, watching the glori- 
ous sight, exclaimed, " See how that noble fellow 
Collingwood carries his ship into action ! " 

Every glass, James tells us, on board the 
"Victory" was employed to discover the flag 
of the French Commander-in-Chief Nelson's 
desire was to get at Villeneuve. All this while 
the " Victory " was slowly floating to within 
gunshot of the enemy's line irregularly followed 
by the ships of the division she led. About 
twenty minutes after the " Fougueux " had fired 
at the " Royal Sovereign " the " Bucentaure " 
let fly a shot at the " Victory." It fell short. 
A second shot dropped alongside. At last a 
fifth or sixth shot pierced the main-topgallant 
sail. " A minute or two of awful silence en- 



Trafalgar 263 

sued," says James. Then in a mighty shock of 
thunder nearly the whole of the weathermost 
ships of the enemy blazed their great ordnance 
at the " Victory." Almost never before had 
such a fire been directed at a single ship. She 
kept silent, and continued to float onwards at 
the rate of about a knot. 

Nelson's tactics were these. The " Victory " 
was to break through the enemy's line at about 
his tenth ship. This being done, some nine or 
ten of the enemy's ships to leeward were ren- 
dered useless; they had no steam to - propel 
them to the help of their friends ; the air was 
so light that it was impossible they could have 
had way enough upon them to tack, and the 
battle would have been decided by the time they 
wore. Nelson, thus, by his plan of attack, 
created for his twenty-seven ships a stronger 
force than the Combined Fleets could oppose to 
him, thirty-three as they were. 

Shortly after the " Victory " fired her first 
fatal broadside, the ships astern of the British 
leaders broke through the Franco-Spanish line 
in all parts, and, to quote Collingwood, " en- 
gaged the enemy at the muzzles of their guns." 
James tells us that when the French and Span- 
ish ships perceived that the " Victory " was 
about to follow the example of the " Royal Sov- 



264 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

ereign," " they closed like a forest." This is 
difficult to realise, seeing that he informs us that 
by this time the wind had gradually died away 
to a mere breath, and that the " Victory " owed 
such motion as she had to the impulse of the 
swell. 

A shot passed between Nelson and Hardy as 
they paced the deck. They stopped and looked 
at each other, each supposing the other wounded. 
Nelson then smiled and said : " This is too warm 
work. Hardy, to last long," and he added that 
he had never in all his experience witnessed 
more cool courage than was being displayed by 
the " Victory's " crew. Warm work it was ! 
Every ship that could point a gun at the " Vic- 
tory " was firing at her. She floated under the 
stern of the " Bucentaure," and smashed a 
broadside into the Frenchman's cabin windows. 
She was receiving at this time the direct lire of 
the " Neptune " and the " Redoutable." She 
then fell foul of the latter ship. The scene 
now becomes a lurid and tremendous picture. 
Masts come crashing from aloft ; canvas and 
bulwarks are riddled into the appearance of 
gratings, ship falls upon ship, and they engage 
so close that the men who fight the guns are 
almost suffocated by the black and filthy vomit- 
ings. What were the sensations of the captains 



Trafalgar 265 

in command of those ships which Nelson's tac- 
tics had as effectually disabled as if they had 
been sunk or burnt ? The British attack was 
irresistible. There was no virtue in the spirit 
of the Spaniard or the Frenchman to oppose 
that terrific shock of war. We were fighting for 
peace, we were fighting to annihilate the enemy 
that peace might be assured. Prize-money was 
a quite secondary consideration ; those devils 
alongside were to be subdued at the cost of 
extermination, as Nelson said, and he cared not 
whether they floated or sank so long as they 
were hopelessly and irretrievably beaten and 
sent back to hell. 

Captain Mahan has quoted the graphic ac- 
count of the battle written by Lieutenant Paul 
Harris Nicolas and published in 1829. The 
young fellow's story (he was a lieutenant of ma- 
rines, sixteen years old) runs thus: "As the 
day dawned the horizon appeared covered with 
ships. I was awakened by the cheers of the 
crew, and by their rushing up the hatchways to 
get a glimpse of the hostile fleet. The delight 
manifested exceeded anything I ever witnessed, 
surpassing even those gratulations when our 
native cliffs are descried after a long period of 
distant service. At nine we were about six 
miles from them, with studding sails set on both 



266 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

sides. The officers now met at breakfast, and 
though each seemed to exult in the hope of a 
glorious termination to the contest so near at 
hand, a fearful presage was experienced that all 
would not again unite at that festive board. One 
was particularly impressed with a persuasion that 
he should not survive the day. The sound of 
the drum, however, soon put an end to our 
meditations, and after a hasty, and alas ! a final 
farewell to some, we repaired to our respective 
posts. Our ship's station was far astern of our 
leader, but her superior sailing caused an inter- 
change of places with the ' Tonnant.' On our 
passing that ship, the captains greeted each other 
on the honourable prospect in view. Captain 
Tyler ('Tonnant') exclaimed: 'A glorious day 
for old England ! We shall have one a-piece 
before to-night ! ' As if in confirmation of this 
soul-inspiring sentiment the band of our con- 
sort was playing * Britons strike home.' 

" The drum now repeated its summons, and 
the Captain sent for the officers commanding at 
their several quarters. ' Gentlemen,' said he, 
* I have only to say that I shall pass close under 
the stern of that ship ; put in two round shot 
and then a grape, and give her that. Now go 
to your quarters, and mind not to fire until each 
gun will bear with effect.' With this laconic 



Trafalgar 267 

instruction the gallant little man posted himself 
on the side of the foremost carronade on the 
starboard side of the quarter-deck. 

" From the peculiar formation of this part of 
the enemy's line as many as ten ships brought 
their broadside to bear with powerful effect. 
The determined and resolute countenance of 
the weather-beaten sailors, here and there bright- 
ened by a smile of exultation, was well suited to 
the terrific appearance which they exhibited. 
Some were stripped to the waist ; some had 
bared their necks and arms ; others had tied a 
handkerchief round their heads ; and all seemed 
eagerly to await the order to engage. The shot 
began to pass over us, and gave us an intima- 
tion of what we should in a few minutes un- 
dergo. An awful silence prevailed in the ship, 
only interrupted by the commanding voice of 
Captain Hargood, ' Steady ! Starboard a little ! 
steady so ! ' echoed by the master directing the 
quartermasters at the wheel. A shriek soon 
followed, a cry of agony was produced by the 
next shot, and the loss of a head of a poor re- 
cruit was the effect of the succeeding ; and as 
we advanced destruction rapidly advanced. 

" It was just twelve o'clock when we reached 
their line. Our energies became roused and the 
mind diverted from its appalling condition by 



268 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

the order of * Stand to your guns ! ' which as 
they successively came to bear were discharged 
into our opponents on either side. Although 
until that moment we had not fired a shot our 
sails and rigging bore evident proofs of the man- 
ner in which we had been treated ; our mizzen- 
topmast was shot away and the ensign had thrice 
been re-hoisted. The firing was now tremend- 
ous, and at intervals the dispersion of the smoke 
gave us a sight of the colours of our adversaries. 

" At this critical period, whilst steering for the 
stern of the ' Indomptable,' which continued a 
most galling, raking fire upon us, the *Fougueux ' 
being on our starboard quarter and the Spanish 
' San Justo ' on our larboard bow, the master 
earnestly addressed the captain. ' Shall we go 

through, sir ? ' ' Go through by ! ' was 

his energetic reply. ' There 's your ship, sir, 
place me close alongside of her.' Our opponent 
defeated this manoeuvre by bearing away in a 
parallel course with us within pistol-shot. 

" About one o'clock the ' Fougueux ' ran us 
on board the starboard side, and we continued 
thus engaging till the latter dropped astern. 
Our mizzenmast soon went, and soon afterwards 
the maintopmast. A two-decked ship, the 
* Neptune,' then took a position on our bow, 
and a seventy-four, ' Achille,' on our quarter. 



Trafalgar 269 

At two o'clock the mainmast fell over our lar- 
board side ; I was at the time under the break 
of the poop, aiding in running out a carronade, 
when a cry of * Stand clear there! here it comes!' 
made me look up, and at that instant the main- 
mast fell over the bulwarks just above me. 
This ponderous mass made the whole ship's 
frame shake, and had it taken a central direc- 
tion it would have gone through the poop and 
added many to our list of sufferers. At half- 
past two our foremast was shot away close to 
the deck. ^ 

"In this unmanageable state we were but sel- 
dom capable of annoying our antagonists, while 
they had the power of choosing their distance, 
and every shot from them did considerable exe- 
cution. Until half-past three we remained in 
this harassing situation. At this hour a three- 
decked ship was seen apparently steering towards 
us ; it can easily be imagined with what anxiety 
every eye turned towards this formidable object, 
which would either relieve us from our unwel- 
come neighbours or render our situation desper- 
ate. We had scarcely seen the British colours 
since one o'clock, and it is impossible to express 
our emotion as the alteration of the stranger's 
course displayed the white ensign to our sight. 
Soon the ' Swiftsure ' came nobly to our relief 



270 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Can any enjoyment in life be compared with the 
sensation of delight and thankfulness which such 
a deliverance produced ? On ordinary occasions 
we contemplate the grandeur of a ship under 
sail with admiration ; but under impression of 
danger and excitement such as prevailed at this 
crisis every one eagerly looked toward our ap- 
proaching friend, who came speedily on, and when 
within hail manned the rigging, cheered, and then 
boldly steered for the ship which had so long 
annoyed us. 

" Before sunset all firing had ceased. The 
view of the fleet at this period was highly inter- 
esting, and would have formed a beautiful sub- 
ject for a painter. Just under the setting rays 
were five or six dismantled prizes ; on one hand 
lay the ' Victory ' with part of our fleet and 
prizes, on the left hand the ^ Sovereign ' and a 
similar cluster of ships ; the remnant of the com- 
bined fleet was making for Cadiz to the north- 
ward. The ' Achille ' had burned to the water's 
edge with the tricoloured ensign still displayed, 
about a mile from us, and our tenders and boats 
were using every effbrt to save the brave fellows 
who had so gloriously defended her; but only 
two hundred and fifty were rescued, and she blew 
up with a tremendous explosion." 

Nelson and Captain Hardy were walking the 



Trafalgar 271 

deck of the " Victory " at about a quarter past 
one, while the battle all about still raged, when 
a ball struck him in the shoulder and penetrated 
his chest. He fell to the deck on his face. A 
sergeant of marines and two seamen raised him, 
stained with the blood of his own secretary, 
Scott, who had been killed on the spot a little 
while before. " They have done for me at last, 
Hardy," said Nelson. " I hope not," was the 
answer. " Yes," said he ; " my backbone is 
shot through." They carried him down into 
the cock-pit, a gloomy abode indeed, hellish with 
the groans of the wounded, ghastly with the 
figures of the dying or the dead. One of the 
wounded called out to the surgeon, who had just 
examined two officers and found them lifeless : 
" Mr. Beatty, Lord Nelson is here. Mr. Beatty, 
the Admiral is wounded." He ran to Nelson's 
side. "Ah, Mr. Beatty," exclaimed the dying 
victor, "you can do nothing for me. I have 
but a short time to live." " Alas ! Beatty, how 
prophetic you were ! " cried Dr. Scott, referring 
to the apprehensions the surgeon had expressed 
for Nelson's safety, as he had throughout worn 
a coat conspicuous with orders upon it. 

There is not a more affecting and tragic scene 
in the records of humanity than this great and 
glorious man's deathbed. Affecting it was, and 



272 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

no Englishman can read the description of it at 
this hour unmoved, because it was Nelson who 
lay dying ; and it is tragic because of the red 
and thunderous frame it was set in. Dr. Scott, 
the chaplain, used to speak of the deck of the 
" Victory " as resembling a " butcher's sham- 
bles." He saw an officer in some frenzy of 
pain tear the ligatures from his wound and bleed 
to death. The ladder was slippery with blood. 
On deck all was uproar, shouts, the volcanic 
blast of guns, and smoke as thick as fog. Scott 
bent over the dying hero, who said in a low 
voice, " I leave Lady Hamilton and my adopted 
daughter, Horatia, as a legacy to my country." 
His constant cry was for drink, and they gave 
him lemonade and wine-and-water. The " Vic- 
tory's " crew cheered whenever an enemy's ship 
struck. One of these huzzas reached Nelson's 
ears. Lieutenant Pasco, who lay wounded, an- 
swered his inquiry, and the news lighted up his 
pale face. He constantly asked for Captain 
Hardy, who at last arrived. They shook hands 
affectionately, and Nelson inquired how the 
battle went. Hardy answered that twelve or 
fourteen of the enemy's ships had struck. " I 
hope," said Nelson, " none of our ships have 
struck. Hardy ? " " No, my Lord," replied 
Hardy, " there is no fear of that." 



Trafalgar 273 

When Hardy made his second visit Nelson 
was still alive, and the Captain congratulated him, 
even in the moment of death, on his brilliant 
victory. He could not tell how many ships 
were taken ; he believed fourteen or fifteen. 
" That is well," answered Nelson, " but I bar- 
gained for twenty ; " and then emphatically 
exclaimed, " Anchor, Hardy, anchor." The 
dying hero could not then, perhaps, conceive 
that the ground tackle of most of the ships was 
in such a condition as to render anchoring im- 
possible. Collingwood afterwards did not an- 
chor, and has been blamed for the loss of many 
prizes. But he was a great sailor, and exactly 
knew what to do. And it is only writers igno- 
rant of the difficulties and perils of the ocean, 
of shoals and lee shores, and heavy gales of 
wind, and crippled ships, some without steering 
gear, some sheer hulks, who would challenge 
the judgment of such a seaman as Collingwood, 
who was there and responsible ! 

" Doctor," said Nelson, turning to the Chap- 
lain, " I have not been a great sinner." The 
Doctor rubbed the poor sufferer's body, and they 
often ejaculated short prayers together; and 
Nelson frequently said, " Pray for me. Doctor." 
The last words the Chaplain heard Nelson mur- 
mur were, " God and my country." And then 

18 



2/4 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

he peacefully died — so calmly that Scott, who 
was rubbing his breast, continued to chafe him 
for some minutes, unconscious that the end had 
come. 

Thus died one of the most beautiful, noble, 
and heroic characters which this country has 
ever produced, or of which the history of the 
world makes any mention. No Englishman 
has left a more valuable memory. The name 
of Nelson is as magical to-day as it was when 
he was fighting the battles of his country. It 
is the inspiration of all that is honourable, fear- 
less, patriotic, to the very crown and summit of 
the meaning of the words. He was as simple 
as a child, he was as tender and affectionate as a 
woman, and his heart was that of a lion. The 
material and moral debt of the country to this 
man is so great that when we seek for compari- 
son in the services of even the most splendid and 
shining characters we find the appeal weak ; the 
claim shrinks, even if it be a Wellington on 
whom our eyes are fixed, because in no one life 
will we discover combined all that Nelson did 
for England, and in no one human memory will 
we find the influence that he still exerts. 



CHAPTER XII 

POOR JACK 

Preliminary Notice 

In Nelson's time the Royal Navy was largely dependent 
upon the Merchant Service for the seamen who manned its 
ships. The wisdom of our forefathers provided for this by 
certain laws called the Navigation Acts. It was contrived 
that if a shipowner allowed one foreigner aboard his vessel he 
was forced by the Acts to take a certain number of English- 
men proportioned to the tonnage of the ship. This simple 
expedient kept up the supply of British sailors, and a finer 
race of Merchant Seamen than those which existed in Nelson's 
time never trod shipboard before or since. When the Navi- 
gation Laws were repealed, custom for some years clung, and 
the large full-rigged ships continued to put forth liberally 
manned. But by degrees the gangrene of managing owner- 
ship bit its way steadily into the vitals of the Merchant Ser- 
vice. The Managing Owner is a man without patriotism ; he 
is concerned in dividends only. It is his business to make his 
*' boat " " pay." Who will blame him ? But the eiFect of 
competition has been to drive out the good English seamen 
and to let in the base foreigner. It cannot be long before the 
English seaman will to all intents and purposes cease to have 
existence. At the present time there are three hundred non- 
naturalised foreigners in command of ships in the British Mer- 
cantile Marine. How many mates and second mates I have 
not ascertained. The ship's forecastle is filled with the for- 



276 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

eigner, but the shipowner, I believe, much as he admires the 
man's theories of cheap wage and unfit diet, has not thought 
proper yet to trust him with the engines. It seems to be a 
question of supreme importance, because I do not see where 
we are to turn unless to the Merchant Service for sailors to 
man our ships when men are wanted. It is useless to talk of 
the fishermen and the longshoremen. Nelson long ago discov- 
ered that there was no confidence to be reposed in that sort 
of people, and that though imminent and deadly as the peril 
apparently was, only the faintest response attended our hero's 
patriotic appeal to the men. The following article is reprinted 
from the "English Illustrated Magazine " (1896), and it fitly 
supplements a series of sketches of the career of a man whose 
victories were achieved by help of the merchant seamen who 

manned his fleets. 

1897. 

** Unless some provision is at once made for the training of 
boys the employment of foreign sailors must of necessity con- 
siderably increase ; and ten years hence, under present condi- 
tions, a British crew will be almost unobtainable. This matter 
requires to be dealt with immediately and on a large scale. 
It is in the domestic affairs of the country the most vital ques- 
tion of the day. ... If the number of British seamen were 
sufficiently increased there would never be any difficulty in 
getting men for the Navy." — Mr. Joseph Hoult, "Man- 
ning Report," 1896. 

T AM happy to find myself in accord with a 
•^ gentleman who is so well known in shipping 
circles as Mr. Joseph Hoult of Liverpool. But 
how is it that Mr. Hoult has waited until now 
to make a discovery of imperial moment ? Or, 



Poor Jack 277 

if before the current year he was sensible that 
the British merchant seaman was a decaying con- 
dition of our national life, why did not he put 
his alarms upon record ? Why, as a patriot, 
which I am sure he is, should he persistently 
have kept the telescope at his blind eye ! He 
doubtless understood, as did the rest of his 
fraternity, to what the encouragement of the 
foreigner to sail in British forecastles was 
tending. 

In 1 88 1 I left Newcastle-on-Tyne to settle in 
London. My professional obligations caused 
me to look very closely into the maritime life, 
and I then quite easily saw that if the British 
shipowner was not restricted in his employment 
of foreign labour the doom of our mercantile 
Jack was sealed. When the Shipping office was 
on Tower Hill, I visited that dismal haunt of 
the dejected, and often hopeless, English sea- 
man : it was dirty and neglected ; its grimy 
alcoves or shelters yawned in sullen sympathy 
with the weary mariner waiting for a ship. I 
spent some hours in that melancholy cavern, 
and stood a careful observer of what was passing. 
I took notice of a large number of foreigners, 
yellow-haired, freckled, self-confident, audacious 
in their knowledge that they were of the elect. 
I also observed that many of the English sea- 



278 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

men, though poorly clad, and exhibiting other 
marks of great poverty, were as likely a lot of 
livelies as a sailor who knows the character of 
sailors, who is fit to command sailors, could wish 
to fill his forecastle with. Yet what was my 
experience ? Crew after crew of " Dutchmen " 
were called in to " sign on." Every time the 
door was opened the English seamen darted 
eager looks. " Good God ! " I thought, " am 
I in England ? Is it imaginable that the ' bally 
Scandyhoovian,' the Dago, the ' Dutchman,' 
have gained a victory undreamt of by Tromp 
and De Ruyter ! " Ex pede Herculem. I 
seemed to find the magnificent industry which 
had been built up by the British blood and by 
the splendid seafaring qualities of the British 
sailor in the hands of the foreigner, who was 
good enough to allow us to continue to fly our 
flag because our shipowners were considerate 
enough to choose him, and feed him, and pay 
him. 

These kingdoms form the greatest maritime 
nation that the world has ever beheld. It is, 
nevertheless, true that there is scarce a public in 
Europe more ignorant of and indifferent to sea 
affairs than the people of this country. If you 
speak to the man in the street about our Mer- 
cantile Marine he will look at you with a dull 



Poor Jack 279 

and silly eye. Pronounce the word sailor, and 
his imagination conjures up the bluejacket who 
lurched against him round the corner yonder. 
" MilHons," wrote a shipowner to me, " have 
never seen the ocean, much less ships. What, 
then, should they know about the Mercantile 
Marine ? " But there are millions who have 
seen the ocean and travelled upon it ; scores of 
them keep yachts, scores have seats in the 
House of Commons ; and to these millions the 
Mercantile Marine is as much an abstraction as 
the Revenue was to Charles Lamb. The man 
in the street, feeling unwell, resolves on a trip 
to New York. On his return he has seen 
nothing but New York. What has gone 
between consists of certain dim sensations and 
perceptions of nausea, meal-time, the smoking- 
room, and large head seas. Although he is 
being swept onwards by a superb example of 
our great national industry, he takes no count of 
it. To him the captain is a man in buttons on 
a bridge. Does the man in the street realise 
the enormous responsibilities, moral and mate- 
rial, which that figure up there embodies — the 
safety of the noble fabric, the precious lives of 
perhaps a thousand people, cargo of the value 
of a German principality ? Does the man in the 
street note the sailors who move about the decks 



280 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

forward, the firemen, and others who rise, sweat- 
ing and purple out of the hell in the deep 
bowels of the ship ? He will tell you about 
Broadway, but he has not a syllable to utter on 
the subject of our Merchant Service and the 
sailors who navigated and worked the ship 
that conveyed him across the Atlantic and 
home. 

Now, in making the above statement, I am 
quite convinced of its accuracy, and I am also 
persuaded that the ship-owning classes are like- 
wise conscious that the man in the street heeds 
not, and knows nothing about, our Mercantile 
Marine. And so for years, taking advantage of 
an ignorance which is largely due to indifference, 
they have been insidiously sapping the life of 
the British merchant seaman by stealthy but 
insistent importation of the foreigner, whose 
recommendation, we are told, is that he is cheap, 
that he does not murmur when bad food is 
given to him, that he is tractable, and that ship- 
masters choose him in preference to their fellow- 
countrymen. To what issue? In " Brassey's 
Naval Annual" for 1895 ^^ ^^ stated, on an 
authority which the shipowners themselves do 
not resist, that our Mercantile Marine is manned 
by 235,000 men, of whom 55,000 only are British 
seamen ! The statement proceeds : " This is 



Poor Jack 281 

but a little more than half of the Naval Reserve 
of France." 

These were the figures in 1895. What will 
this year give us ? And how will next year 
work out?^ Of these 55,000 British sailors a 
large proportion are without work. This is 
clearly stated by a very intelligent writer in a 
shipping paper, Aug. 13, 1896: " How many 
thousand seamen are there at the present mo- 
ment out of employment, and why don't they 
go to the Royal Navy if they have a turn that 
way ? And if they have not a turn .that way 
they are not likely to alter their minds, when by 
Mr. Clark Russell's plan there would be four- 
fold employment for them in the Mercantile 
Marine." I paused to explain that I never 
suggested a " fourfold employment." I had 
said that it was " our duty to foster the merchant 
seaman, to double him, to quadruple him." 
This could only be done by the elimination of 
the foreign element from our forecastles. Ships 
might go undermanned as they are, but still, by 
getting rid of your foreigners you would speedily 
treble and quadruple your British merchant sea- 
man. It stands to reason that the thousands of 
English sailors who cannot obtain employment 
because of the forecastle being filled with foreign 

1 This year (1897) the number is 30,000. 



282 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

labour must either starve and die or seek work 
ashore ; or if they continue sailors they will not 
serve under the commercial flag of this country. 
The process of diminution then is steady, and 
unless the decay is arrested promptly, and by 
imperial measures, the country will find itself 
face to face with a condition that to my mind is 
little less than appalling — I mean the total and, 
I fear, the irremediable extinction of the British 
merchant seaman. 

Is the country willing that he should be 
extinguished.^ Are we content to reflect that 
the day is not far distant when our steamers and 
sailing-ships will be entirely manned by for- 
eigners ? Mr. Goschen, one of the shrewdest 
of politicians, seems of opinion that the Mer- 
cantile Marine cannot any longer be consid- 
ered as a source for drafts for the Royal 
Navy. I hold, therefore, that the shipowners 
who are desperately jealous of the encroach- 
ment of the foreigner upon their trade will be 
responsible, themselves only, for the annihilation 
of what I have always regarded as our second 
line of defence. 

Our forefathers manifestly understood the tra- 
ditional character of the shipowner better than 
we do : they provided against the failure of 
those patriotic sentiments which should animate 



Poor Jack 283 

us all by certain enactments which figure in 
history as the Navigation Laws. Under those 
laws a shipowner, if he entered but one foreign 
sailor, was compelled to ship one British seaman 
to every twenty tons ; and in no case was the 
foreign element allowed to exceed one fourth of 
the whole. Thus a ship of one thousand tons 
would sail with fifty British seamen in her fore- 
castle, and her owner would probably not think 
any addition necessary to that complement in 
the shape of the foreigner. The wisdom of this 
provision was again and again illustrated. Lord 
Howe's great and important victory of June i 
was gained chiefly by the merchant seamen of 
the kingdom. When the war broke out in 1793 
we had not forty-five thousand men, and they 
were scattered over the globe. The merchant 
service enabled us swiftly to man some sixty sail 
of the line and double the number of frigates 
and smaller vessels. Some thirty-five thousand 
or forty-five thousand seamen of the Mercantile 
Marine were rapidly brought together; and 
these men, in addition to those in the Service, 
enabled Admiral Gardner to proceed to the 
West Indies with seven sail of the Hne ; and 
Lord Hood, with twenty-two sail of the line, to 
the Mediterranean, to occupy Toulon and cap- 
ture Corsica. Other squadrons were sent to 



284 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

America and the East Indies to protect our 
interests in those quarters ; and Lord Howe 
guarded the Channel with twenty-seven sail of 
the line. 

I shall be told that the manning of the war- 
ships was due to the pressgangs. But the 
sources of supply were there ! Collingwood's 
ship, the " Royal Sovereign," that was ahead of 
the other British vessels at Trafalgar by a quar- 
ter of an hour or twenty minutes, was filled with 
merchant men from the Tyne Side, and how 
those seamen spoke in their guns whilst the 
noble old Admiral paced the deck munching an 
apple, all who have read the thrilling story of 
the most glorious of sea-fights will know. 

Steam, of course, has greatly modified the 
duties of the sea career. But there still remains 
a small tonnage in sail from which the foreigner 
should be rigorously excluded. And the steam- 
boat will always be in need of sailors ; there is, 
indeed, nothing to do aloft ; but the lead, the 
look-out, the boats, the helm, tending the small 
canvas the vessel may carry, are sailors' work, 
and no other labourer springing on board off 
the edge of a wharf would be fit for it. There 
are many duties on board a steamer which sea- 
men alone can discharge. Mr. G. A. Laws, Gen- 
eral Manager of the Shipping Federation, and 



Poor Jack 285 

one of the ablest of the exponents of the interests 
of the shipowners, seems of opinion that seamen 
will not be required for the Navy. I recall this 
singular statement because I regard it as ex- 
pressing, but not explaining, the motive of the 
shipowners' neglect of the merchant seaman. 
Mr. Laws says that the captain of an ironclad 
will carry her into action with marine gunners, 
marines, engineers, and stokers. Cest tout ! no 
bluejackets ! Who is to man the boats ? Who 
is to take possession ? What body of men 
are to be thrown ashore to fight side by side 
with the marines ? Who, in short, of Mr. 
Laws' crew are to take the place of our naval 
seamen } 

If the shipowners are permitted to extinguish 
the sailor they will repel the rising youth of this 
country, and English boys will not go to sea 
because their fathers would easily perceive that 
they had more reasonably dedicated them to the 
life of the crossing and the broom than to a 
profession from which they will be swiftly ex- 
pelled by the foreigner. The shipowners com- 
plain of over-legislation, but it seems to me that 
they are ceaselessly provoking it. Even as I 
write legislation may be in the air in respect of 
a new manning scale. And should this happen, 
further legislation may be threatening, for it 



286 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

cannot be doubted that the public, when it is 
tardily made to understand that the seaman is a 
decaying factor, and must presently be as dead 
as the dodo, will insist upon the Legislature 
going to work to resuscitate and enlarge him 
into all necessary plenty. It may be done ! 
Our forefathers did it. A few years of fostering 
would fill London and the outports with British 
seamen. The forecastle would cease to be a 
menagerie. The red flag would float in pride, 
and the country would have its own again. 

As the seaman is an uneducated man in the 
main — there are many exceptions — he cannot 
make his grievances understood nor his wishes 
felt, either in print or by speech. He forms 
into processions, but these tedious trudgings are 
bitterly aimless for want of profitable govern- 
ance. I have been much scorned and derided 
by the shipping Press for speaking of Jack's 
"characteristic simplicity" and "childlike na- 
ture," but am I the inventor or the discoverer 
of these qualities in the seaman ? Is it not these 
very traits of character which have endeared 
him to his countrymen, and rendered him the 
most popular of all the toilers on this toilsome 
globe ? From the days of the coracle the sea- 
man's trusting, generous, open nature has been 
the burden of the ballad and the song, and you 



Poor Jack 287 

will find it described at large in works written 
and published long before I was in petticoats. 
It is the confiding and simple character of the 
seaman which the owner has taken advantage of. 
He fed him as he pleased till the law stepped in. 
He sent him to sea in rotting hulls, and again 
the law stepped in. He sends him to sea in 
sailing ships whose crews are all too few, and 
in steamers to be, by his paucity, a source of 
terror on the ocean highway. 

When the Sailors' and Firemen's Association 
was established my best wishes attended it, 
though knowing that the sailor's life was inevit- 
ably errant and fugitive, I feared that combina- 
tion would be impracticable. How can a man 
combine who cannot live unless he goes away ? 
Still, I trusted that the representatives he left 
behind would serviceably, patiently, and always 
honourably seek to promote his interests. It is 
many years now since I received this letter : — 

North of England Sailors' and Firemen's Assoc, 

130, High Street, Sunderland, Dec. 5, 1884. 

Dear Sir, — I have been authorised by the above 
Society to ask you if you would be so kind as to repre- 
sent our Society along with Mr. T. Burt on the Com- 
mission for Shipping. We nominate you. Please let 
us know as soon as possible. — I am, yours truly, 

S. J. Petty, Secretary. 



288 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

My professional duties obliged me to decline, 
but in the desire to contribute something to- 
wards a movement which I considered good and 
hopeful, I wrote an article in the " Contemporary 
Review," which I called " A Forecastle View 
of the Shipping Commission." This article 
brought me a letter from the late Mr. Thomas 
Gray, of the Board of Trade, asking me for a 
private interview. I was unable to comply, but 
I regret now that I did not make the acquaint- 
ance of a gentleman whose sympathies very 
strongly inclined towards seamen. For some 
years I followed the proceedings of the Union 
with interest ; but when it came to the unmanly 
and brutal system of the picket and to exactions 
on the pocket of the seaman, I own that I was 
repelled ; I could find nothing in this form of 
unionism to commend itself to any theory of 
action calculated to prove of real and lasting 
benefit to the merchant sailor. A policy of 
rabid aggression could end in nothing but the 
alienation of public sympathy. It was hard that 
seamen, thousands of miles distant, should be 
held responsible for the actions of those who 
were said to represent them ashore. As in law 
a man is bound by his agent, so by society is he 
taken at the value of the representation he sub- 
mits. I do not suppose that the labours of 



Poor Jack 289 

unionism where docks and seamen are concerned 
can be pursued with hands in kid gloves ; but 
prudence surely should have dictated limitations, 
seeing that the contest is between great poverty 
and great wealth ; and the policy that forced the 
shipowners to combine for the preservation of 
their imperilled property was ill-judged. 

The Shipping Federation is the combination 
I refer to. It is an association of owners and 
managers, who, in spite of the spirit of competi- 
tion which makes them love one another much 
as Mrs. Gamp loved humanity (" I could lay 
'em all out for nothing, sich is the love I bears 
'em "), formed into a phalanx, and in grim array, 
bristling with weapons of shipping offices. Fed- 
eration tickets, and the like, hissed defiance at 
the Union and bade it come on. It did come 
on, but only to break itself into pieces as the 
roller plunging at the base of the rock recoils in 
shattered waters. 

We are being constantly reminded that the 
shipping industry is in a semi-insolvent state, 
and those who make us acquainted with this 
dark and dreary condition of things send their 
letters to the newspapers from great West-End 
squares, and from mansions in London and 
from manors in the provinces. No one need 
doubt that just at present a certain class of 

iq 



290 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

owner is not saving very much money — he is 
not, in short, growing rapidly wealthy. To 
him belongs the steam-tramp, the cheaply built 
and heavily burdened boat, whose launch added 
a hew terror to the many which old ocean 
has created for the discomfiture of man. The 
owner of one boat — I might easily say two, but 
will call it one — is typically a gentleman whose 
sense of moral obligations is created by the 
Shipping Acts. If there were no Acts he would 
have no sense of moral obligations. Very lean 
does he keep the duties imposed upon him by 
law. He would starve them if he durst. With 
him and in his boat the hungry British ship- 
master, so that he may obtain employment, 
invests his poor savings — money gained by 
years of such labour and anxieties as there is no 
virtue in the pen to communicate. He is de- 
frauded ; others who have invested are defrauded. 
But before this has happened, possibly the 
cargo-tank, made wicked by frequent visits of 
the managing owner, has sunk two or three good 
ships, and imperilled the safety of a liner with 
two hundred and eighty thousand pounds in 
specie aboard. Why not .? The gentleman 
whose moral obligations are entirely statutory 
has sent her to sea so undermanned that she is a 
menace to everything that crosses her bows. 



Poor Jack 291 

Four sailors in the forecastle — two in a watch ! 
an officer, who dare not tell the truth for fear 
of being dismissed, on the bridge, and this gal- 
lant ship may be fifteen hundred tons, and her 
official number can be read in " Mitchell's Cist." 

I am asked how I connect the ocean tramp 
with that decay of the British merchant sailor 
which I am lamenting. I answer by saying that 
if vou step on board one of these vessels you 
will be saluted by the German mate in broken 
English, and that if you go forward the first 
man you speak to will scarcely understand you 
because he is a Russian Finn, and the second 
man you address is a Dane, and a third some 
strange, wild mixture of black and white blood, 
of a nation indeterminable, but of considerable 
capacities where his sheath-knife fits the hip. 
Three to one, — for the fourth shall be an Eng- 
lishman, — in this noble ship's company; for it 
is true that even from the meanest forecastle 
under the British flag the foreigner is expelling 
the Englishman. 

Was it for the Dutchman and for the splen- 
did services he rendered this country that Camp- 
bell wrote that noble lyric "Ye Mariners of 
England " ^ Was it for the Dago and the Finn 
that the same fine poet composed those thriUing 
verses beginning, — 



292 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

Men of England ! who inherit 
Rights that cost your sires their blood ? 

I cannot but write with some heat when I think 
of this foreign invasion, and reflect upon the 
Germans' and the " Scandyhoovians' " appro- 
priation of Jack's heritage. The shipowners 
must not whine an apology for an extinction 
whose effect they will be the first to feel, and 
which many are now viewing with ill-dissembled 
alarm, by pleading that our sailors are not the 
men our forefathers were. This assurance may 
be dismissed with contempt. The seaman of 
to-day is as able, high-spirited, and alert a man 
as ever sailed to the Indies last century, as ever 
helped thrash the Spaniard up-Channel round 
into the North Sea. But what chance do you 
give him ? You put him into an undermanned 
ship ; a heavily large proportion of his shipmates 
are of different nationalities. One swallow does 
not make a summer. One or two able British 
seamen will not make a good crew. In short, 
the shipowners do not require the services of 
the English sailor, and I am very sorry to say 
that their destructive neglect of the man is backed 
by the submissive acquiescence of the British 
shipmaster. No doubt much of the support 
the shipowners are receiving in their efforts to 
surpress our native seamen is due to the ship- 



Poor Jack 293 

master's fear of being dismissed ; therefore, in 
order to earn his bread he continues to choose 
foreign crews, smacks his lips over them, pro- 
fesses to relish them ; but if he has crawled 
through the hawse-pipe, as he doubtless has, he 
lies in his heart, and knows that he lies, when 
he affirms that a crew of mixed nationalities is 
superior to a crew of English sailors. That the 
ship-master is constrained by fear and will not 
speak the truth because his berth is his life I 
am convinced by this token : that, when he quits 
the sea and settles down with a telescope in some 
little 'longshore home called " The Perch " or 
"The Cabin," he will not suffer a syllable to be 
said against the British seaman. Independence 
matures the spirit of loyalty, and he is faithful 
then in his sentiments to his flag and his country. 
I have dealt with a question that is not gen- 
erally understood, and it is not in the power of 
a single pen to make itself felt and heard over 
the wide area of interests which the subject con- 
cerns. The great public Press of this country, 
the directors and the expositors of public opin- 
ion, should deal with the decay of the British 
merchant seaman as with something of supreme 
national moment, annually growing in urgency. 
I repeat what I have elsewhere said : the for- 
eigner must be as severely restricted by legisla- 



294 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

tion as he was by the Navigation Acts, and 
every encouragement should be given to our 
merchant sailors to multiply, that we may point 
to them with the same spirit of patriotic pride 
with which we survey the league-long line of 
mighty ironclads, but mighty only in the men 
that man them. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 

IF no hero was ever more mourned it must be 
said that no hero was ever more honoured 
in his death. The news of the victory electri- 
fied the country, but the deep sensations of 
triumph were subdued by the chilling grief of 
an irreparable loss. The Park and ToWer guns 
thundered the news to the Londoners. On 
hearing of the death of Lord Nelson the King 
seemed so deeply affected that a silence of nearly 
five minutes ensued. The Queen called the 
Princesses round her and read the despatches 
aloud and the Royal group wept. 

This story is told of Mr. Pitt, the Prime 
Minister, by Lord Malmesbury : " On the re- 
ceipt of the news of the memorable battle of 
Trafalgar (some day in November, 1805), ■'• 
happened to dine with Pitt and it was naturally 
the engrossing subject of our conversation. I 
shall never forget the eloquent manner in which 
he described his conflicting feehngs when roused 
in the night to read Collingwood's despatches. 
Pitt observed that he had been called up at 



2g6 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

various hours in his eventful life by the arrival 
of news of various hues, but that whether good 
or bad he could always lay his head on his pil- 
low and sink into sound sleep again. On this 
occasion, however, the great event announced 
brought with it so much to weep over, as well 
as to rejoice at, that he could not calm his 
thoughts, but at length got up, though it was 
three in the morning." 

The " Victory " arrived, with the body of 
Nelson on board, at Spithead on the 5th De- 
cember. The corpse had been enclosed in a 
cask, from which it was removed to a plain elm 
coffin under a canopy of colours. Every Admi- 
ral in the British Navy received an invitation to 
attend Nelson's funeral. The Chief Mourner 
was Nelson's early friend. Sir Peter Parker, the 
venerable Admiral of the Fleet. It is stated in 
the Annual Register : " When the Duke of 
Clarence ascended the steps of St. Paul's, he 
suddenly stopped, and took hold of the colours 
that were borne by the ' Victory's ' men, and 
after conversing with one of the gallant tars, he 
burst into tears. On the entrance of the tattered 
flags within the communion rail the Prince of 
Wales, after conversing with the Duke of Clar- 
ence, sent and requested that they might be 
brought as near the grave as possible, and on 



Supplementary Note 297 

observing them, although at some distance, the 
tears fell from his Royal Highness." 

It is pleasant to think that though the Rev. 
William Nelson was presented with an Earl- 
dom, Lady Nelson was not forgotten. On the 
1st February she was thus distinguished by a 
message from the Crown : " His Majesty hav- 
ing taken into His Royal consideration the 
splendid and unparalleled achievements of the 
late Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, Knight 
of the Most Hon. Order of the Bath, during a 
life spent in the service of his country, and ter- 
minated in the moment of victory by a glorious 
death, and being desirous of conferring on his 
relict Lady Viscountess Nelson a nett annuity 
of ^2,000 per annum for the term of her nat- 
ural life, recommends it to his faithful Commons 
to consider of a proper method of enabling His 
Majesty to grant such annuity, and of securing 
and settling the same in such manner as shall 
be thought most effectual for the benefit of the 
said Lady Viscountess Nelson. G.R." 

It was felt by Lord Collingwood as a hard- 
ship that his title was restricted to his life. He 
was practically divorced from his wife for years, 
owing to his being ceaselessly engaged in block- 
ading ; and he had but two daughters, through 
whom the title did not descend. 



298 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

A curious account of Lady Hamilton is re- 
lated in the life of the Reverend Dr. Scott. It 
runs thus : " It may be supposed that, after 
Scott's return from sea, he had little wish, as he 
had little opportunity, for renewing his associa- 
tion with Lady Hamilton. He had known her 
well during his intimacy with his lamented pa- 
tron (Nelson), and had been the frequent witness 
of her peculiar fascinations. She had an heroic 
spirit, great personal attractions and much clev- 
erness, and at Merton, in Clarges Street, and 
in Piccadilly, where Scott was frequently sum- 
moned to participate in the festivities, or to as- 
sist on important occasions of business, he had 
admired her many accomplishments, and been 
amused by her dramatic personating of different 
characters. Though the country did nothing 
for her, she was left at Lord Nelson's death with 
means sufficient to fulfil his wishes in the edu- 
cation of Horatia, having at least ^1,400 a year, 
besides the little estate at Merton, but her van- 
ity and extravagance found this no competency. 
A friend of the Merton coterie was one day 
hailed from a carriage window in London by 
the voice of a lady, whom he recognised as 
Lady Hamilton, and who immediately requested 
him to return home with her to dinner. He 
pleaded an engagement, but was obliged to 



Supplementary Note 299 

promise to visit Merton the following day. He 
had no expectation of meeting any company, 
and was therefore not a little astonished on 
his arrival to find what guests were assembled. 
Signor Rovedino and Madame Bianchi, with 
other birds of the same feather, were regaled 
by her ladyship, on this occasion, with a sumptu- 
ous dinner : and, after the ladies retired, the su- 
perb wines of the Merton cellars, gifts of crowned 
heads, etc., were liberally dispensed by Rove- 
dino, as master of the ceremonies. The friend 
we have alluded to was in the garden next morn- 
ing, long before the breakfast hour, and was at 
length joined there by Lady Hamilton, with 
whom he ventured to remonstrate on the mode 
of life she was pursuing, and the company she 
had treated him with. She attempted to justify 
herself by saying that ' it was a less expensive 
plan than taking Horatia to town for singing 
and Italian lessons.' Her friend, however, 
would not admit her excuse, and at length ex- 
torted the sorrowful confession that her affairs 
were already in a state of grievous embarrass- 
ment. He talked seriously and sincerely with 
her, and agreed to find the means of relieving 
her. In a few days they had another interview, 
when he introduced a gentleman who had re- 
tired from commercial engagements, but was 



300 Pictures from the Life of Nelson 

well skilled in all matters of finance, and who 
undertook, on Lady Hamilton's promising to 
comply with his conditions, to investigate the 
whole state of her affairs, and remedy them, if 
it were possible. On looking into them he 
found that two or three years' retirement in 
Wales upon a small annuity would suffice to 
release her from all difficulties. Into Wales 
she accordingly went, but it was only for a short 
season ; the harp and the viol were soon re- 
sounding from her lighted apartments in Bond 
Street, wilder extravagances than ever were com- 
mitted, and she was again a suppliant for relief 
to the friends whose advice she had disregarded. 
The financier was again appealed to ; but 
this time he refused his aid, avowing openly 
that all attempts to save a person of her character 
must be in vain. Distress soon after pursued 
her abroad : and it is well known that she died 
in great poverty, having gone through one 
of the most extraordinary careers that ever fell 
to the lot of her sex." 

Lady Hamilton was buried just outside 
Calais. When the news of her death reached 
England a Mr. H. Cadogan and Earl Nelson 
went over to Calais, " where," says Mr. W. H. 
Long, " the former paid the funeral expenses of 
the deceased, which amounted to ^^28.10, and 



Supplementary Note 301 

on his return brought her daughter Horatia back 
to her native land with him." This young lady 
married the Reverend Philip Ward, sometime 
vicar of Tenterten in Kent. She died, aged 
eighty-one, March 6, 1881. 



